The Last of the Time Ladies
by SkyWideOpen
Summary: An unwitting mistake by Amelia Pond leaves her and the 11th Doctor changed forever. What will happen now that the Doctor is no longer the last of his kind? And will Amy, in her newfound power and strength, survive the collision with her own past? AU from early S5, eventual Amy/11, character-centric. Dark-ish themes.
1. The Crystal Forest

**I'll say more at the end of the chapter in a proper author's note, but for now, I'll just say that the canon characters, despite the changes I'll eventually make, are not mine and never will be. And I'll also say that reviews of any kind are fantastic, and I hope you enjoy this insignificant little work of mine.**

* * *

><p><strong>NOTES ON CONVENTION. Bolded, italicized speech (in quotes) is Gallifreyean. "<strong>**_Like this_****". ****Telepathic conversations are indicated by italicised bold text not in quotes. ****_Like this_****.**

**The dates after each chapter title are there as a way of "dating" each chapter. They represent how much time has passed since Amy ran away with the Doctor on the night before her wedding (24 June 2010). For example, this date here, 22 August, means that she's been traveling on the TARDIS for about two months.**

* * *

><p><strong>THE LAST OF THE TIME LADIES<strong>

_In fear and desperation, Amy Pond accidentally turns herself into the second last of the Time Lords. Now possessing unimaginable power and intellect, she travels with the Doctor in the knowledge that with two of them, nothing could stop them, right? But neither were counting on one small thing - her past. And as time goes on, Amy will slowly learn that her humanity was a far more precious thing than she ever realised.  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 1. The Crystal Forest: 22 August 2010<strong>

Amy Pond was used to running.

It was a good thing too, she thought, as her long legs propelled her between gleaming rows of giant violet crystals towards the cavern wall. A fair trade-off, she supposed, for seeing the sights that all of time and space had to offer.

_Though giant exploding purple crystals is definitely a first_, she mused.

"Run, Pond! Run! Don't touch the crystals! Just run!"

Amy rolled her eyes as she darted between two four metre tall columns of sparkling gem, narrowly avoiding a shower of shrapnel from a shattered crystal some twenty feet behind her. She spotted the Doctor ahead.

"Well, maybe if you didn't set them on fire _like I told you_, we'd not have this problem!" she snapped, her thick Scottish accent laced with annoyance.

"Not the time for 'I told you so', Pond! Besides which, my sonic was jammed!"

"And so you set them on fire? Plus, how can your sonic be jammed?"

"With great difficulty! Now run!"

Amy rolled her eyes again, ducking as a shard of sparkling violet sailed over where her head was not half a second previously.

_For an insanely smart, alien, he can be so __thick__ sometimes. Must be the_ _bowtie, _she decided. Maybe it was just a quirk that Time Lords had.

Ahead of her, she could see a break in the rows of crystal. Dodging another purple missile, she sprinted out of the crystal forest and joined the Doctor behind a rocky outcrop. Conveniently, it was about chest-high, so a perfect place to be taking cover.

"You OK? Nothing missing? No holes or unusual bumps?" asked the Doctor. Amy could see the adrenaline, the rush from an adventure in his eyes, and couldn't help but smile despite having come within inches of being decapitated.

"Yeah, fine. I think."

"Let me see". He grabbed her hands and examined them carefully, holding them up against the dim light within the cavern. "One, two, three, four... ten. Good. And two legs, I see-"

"-And two arms as well. Really, Doctor. Fine."

The Doctor curled the corner of his lip in amusement.

"You know what they say – better safe than sorry. Now, escape plan." He slowly lifted his head above the top of the outcrop, briefly ducking to avoid being nailed between the eyes by another crystal bullet. "The TARDIS is on the other side of the cavern, as and far as I can tell there's only one way over there."

Amy sighed.

"Let me guess. Through the crystal forest?"

"Basically, yeah."

"Why couldn't we have run for our lives _towards_ the TARDIS?"

"Exploding crystals, Amy. Not conducive to a complete appraisal of our surroundings,"

Amy sighed again. It was never simple with the Doctor, was it?

Then again, if she wanted simple, she would have stayed the mad and scary kissogram in that blasted lifeless village, not witnessing double sunsets against a rainbow sky taken straight out of a masterpiece painting. Neither would she have gone to New York to witness New Year's celebrations for the year 10000, watching firework displays far beyond anything she could have dreamed of in her time.

Nor, for that matter, would she have visited Krylos, home to the largest forest of super-sized amethyst crystals in the known universe. It was one of the most breathtaking sights Amy had ever seen (which, in itself, was quite a feat). A pity, then, that the crystals were distinctly partial to open flame - and nor did they take too kindly, it seemed, to combusting neighbours.

"So," she began slowly, "we have to run back _through_ the forest of giant exploding crystals, trying not to get our heads taken off by a three foot block of purple rock-"

"-Amethyst, Amy. Well, flammable amethyst." interjected the Doctor, who had his sonic screwdriver out and was twirling it about in seemingly random patterns. Amy closed her eyes and paused before continuing.

"Trying not to get our heads taken off by a three foot block of _amethyst, _and reach the TARDIS? Is that the escape plan?"

"Yep!" the Doctor replied brightly. The sonic made a loud clicking noise and he gripped it. "On three, then?"

Despite the direness of the situation – not to mention the deep scepticism she had in the 'escape plan' – Amy had to smile. The Doctor's optimism was truly infectious. She linked her hand through his.

"On three," she replied. "One,"

"Two,"

"_Three!_"

Bursting out behind the outcrop, and again ducking under another improbably large piece of crystal moving improbably fast, they raced back through the forest. They weaved between the towering edifices, only pausing to take cover behind any crystals that had miraculously not yet joined the carnage. Using the sonic screwdriver to navigate them through the sections of the forest that had somehow remained stable, the Doctor pulled his red-headed companion through the crystal forest, racing towards the blue box sitting serenely on the other side of the cavern.

Just as they had finally exited the other side, TARDIS in sight, a huge tremor rocked the ground beneath them, sending them both tumbling to the floor.

"What on earth was that?" Amy asked quietly, blowing a stray lock of hair that had ended up in her mouth after the fall.

"What on Krylos, you mean. These crystals are only the very top of a network, stretching far underground. Like an iceberg."

"So the ground beneath us is exploding as well?"

"Basically. Now, run!"

Amy didn't need telling twice. She sprinted for the blue doors, the Doctor just ahead with his tweed jacket flapping wildly behind him.

_Almost there..._

She heard a horrible, _soft_ ripping noise and felt a sharp pain shoot through her right leg – instinctively, she knew that a crystal had sliced deep into her flesh as she crumpled to the shiny black rock, crying out.

"_Doctor!"_

The Doctor, now at the TARDIS doors, whipped around to see her crumpled form, blood streaming from the wound in her leg and her face white with fear.

"_Amelia!" _Disregarding any thought of his own safety, he ran towards her with all the speed his Time Lord legs could muster.

_BOOM._

An explosion ripped through the ground beneath the Doctor as he ran, steam and shards of glassy purple erupting from the ground. Amy watched in horror as he sailed into the cavern wall and tumbled to the ground, unmoving.

"_No!"_ Dragging her wounded leg behind her, Amy crawled towards him. Shutting out her own pain, she felt for the Time Lord's pulse.

Nothing.

_No. He's not_ _dead, _she told herself, filled with sudden terror._ He can't be dead. My Raggedy Doctor can't possibly be dead_. Tears began welling up in her eyes as she called out his name in desperation. Still nothing.

_Not dead. He can't die. Won't die._ She blinked away the tears. _Focus. Try something. Anything. CPR. It works in the movies._

_This isn't a movie, Amelia_, a voice in her own head answered. She ignored it.

She had to try.

Taking a deep breath in, she parted the Time Lord's lips and forced hers onto them.

* * *

><p>Amy's arms were going numb from the compressions but she didn't care.<p>

_You're wasting your time,_ that deep, dark voice told her. _Even if he weren't dead, CPR can't help anyway._

_No_, she answered. _I won't give up. I'll never give up. I waited for him. I won't watch him die. I won't. I won't_. She shut her eyes, trying to squeeze the tears out of them. She crushed his lifeless lips with hers once more as a desperate sob escaped her.

_Won't give up. Won't give up._

Thirty more compressions. She rested against her head against his chest.

Nothing.

Again she forced her mouth onto the Doctor's, only just managing to place her lips on his as she shook violently. One breath, two breaths...

_Amelia Pond... he's gone_.

This time she had no answer.

She lay, mouth against his, forcing her harsh, uneven breaths into his unresponsive lungs, unable to move, unable to think, convulsed by sobs that came out of her core of her being.

She didn't notice the golden mist rising from his hands.

* * *

><p>Wracked with agony and guilt, Amy Pond had never felt less alive in her life. She wished that one of the crystals could sail into her brain and end her, as it had ended the life of her best friend. Her imaginary friend. She sobbed into his lungs, praying somehow that her breath could somehow engender his.<p>

She felt a slight tingling sensation in her hands, still placed on the Time Lord's cheeks. _Maybe you can die of grief, _she thought_. Maybe this is how it happens... your soul just leaves through your arms. _But then, as her harsh, shallow breaths forced the way into his lungs, she received the most impossible response.

A breath. Tiny.

_Can it be?_

Another, this one stronger.

She opened her eyes and lifted herself off him, and immediately saw the waves of golden mist rising from his face. _He's glowing... how? Could it... possibly?_ Trembling, she placed a hand on his chest. There it was... the familiar double heartbeat.

As she did so, the golden mist disappeared. She stared at his familiar face, the colour returning to it.

"Doc... tor?"

The Time Lord's eyes fluttered open, the gleaming blue eyes struggling to focus.

"Amy?"

Her eyes locked onto his and she began to laugh. Relief, happiness without bound coursed through her, so much so that she began to feel light headed. The pain in her leg even seemed to be dulling. He smiled tiredly up at her as his eyes strained to focus.

"Gotcha," she whispered.

He opened his mouth to reply – but stopped himself. His brow furrowed, his eyes fixing themselves on her as shock, then concern, fell across his features.

"Amy... what have you done?"

"Saved your life. OK with that, are ya?" she replied, putting on a false hint of smugness. She was struggling to think clearly, the light-headedness having morphed into a gripping headache. Relief, she decided, from saving her best friend.

_Think I need a lie down. Today's been a bit much_.

The Doctor sat up, ignoring his own pain and exhaustion as he grabbed her hand.

"Amy, please. This is important. _What did you do?_"

The redhead groaned and closed her eyes, rubbing her forehead. "Could it wait, Doctor? Today's been a bit much, you know. Need a lie down..."

She opened her eyes and gasped. Clouds of golden dust, glowing in the darkness, were rising off her arm. She looked at her other hand and saw the exact same.

_What on earth-_

Without warning, an impossibly bright light exploded before her eyes and seared her brain, her skin feeling as if every inch of her was aflame. She tried to scream but she couldn't control her voice. She couldn't control her arms, her legs, her lungs, anything. The only thought her overloaded brain could muster was that she must surely be dead.

And then, as quickly as it came, the light, the pain, everything vanished, plunging her into utter darkness.

* * *

><p><strong>Okay. Author's note time. Some of you will have seen this before, pre-edit.<br>**

**This is an open-ended AU centering on the life of Amy Pond after she becomes a - you guessed it - Time Lady, and the subsequent evolutions in both her character and her relationship with the Doctor. As you've no doubt noted, it is a _big_ story in terms of length and scope, and it will slowly get darker and darker. It is character-centric (though certainly with action aplenty), and will take an interpretation of Amy that is heavily influenced by her behaviour (if not the events) in S6. It will have romantic elements as well, by the way, and do not assume that canon relationships remain stable - everything is up in the air.**

**The main divergence point is what you've just read, but there's other canon alterations I've made but I won't address directly in the story: namely, there is _no_ Silence and _no_ (canon) River Song. Both removals are for sanity-of-plot reasons, not because I hate them or anything. Whilst the crack in time is still there in the sense that Amy is affected by it (and this is important), it doesn't lead to the Pandorica or similar. The other major change is that the Doctor does _not_ go to pick up Rory immediately after the end of Flesh and Stone. In a sense, therefore, you can consider this story to start some time "between" Flesh and Stone and The Vampires of Venice.  
><strong>

**That should be enough to get by. Once again, I love reviews, so the more the merrier, but otherwise, enjoy the story.  
><strong>


	2. The Last Of The Time Lords

**You might want to refresh yourself on the notes on convention at the top of Chapter 1 if you've forgotten. Seriously, you'll want to keep the formatting conventions close to your chest when reading this. In the words of Amy herself, "****_this_**** is where it gets complicated."**

**Oh, and I'm not going to bother to make the distinction between the species Gallifreyean and the subset Time Lords, since it doesn't actually matter. Steven Moffat doesn't, that's good enough for me.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 2. The Last of the Time Lords: 22 August 2010<strong>

The Doctor watched in shock, horror and in fascination.

_No... it can't be_.

He looked down at himself. He was well acquainted with the intricacies of regeneration, having been through ten and a half of them. He knew what the fire coursing through his veins was, but his hands were the same familiar hands that had accidentally set fire to a giant purple crystal not ten minutes previously. That could only mean that he had used up enough energy to heal himself, but the excess energy that he needed to change his appearance had been redirected, just as it had after he'd been shot by the Dalek. Channelled, in essence, away from him and into something else.

_Or someone else_...

He pursed his lips in self-directed fury. _You should have told her about this,_ he chastised himself,_ instead of keeping her in innocent bliss. Then she would have known, and she wouldn't have done... _

As the last golden lights flickered out of his friend's fingertips and hair, she collapsed lifelessly on the ground. He scrambled across, at her side in an instant. For the first time in... well, as long as he could remember, his fingers trembled as they felt for her neck. The rhythmic thumping he felt there assured him that she was still alive.

_Not just alive._

* * *

><p>Amy woke to soft, cream-coloured light.<p>

_I'm in heaven_.

Her vision quickly cleared, and the room she was in came into focus. _No. Not in heaven. The TARDIS medic bay,_ she realised._ So I'm alive. Always good to know_.

The last fragments of blurriness washed themselves from her vision. She felt good. Wonderful, than she ever had before. The pain in her leg had gone, she noticed. She felt and moved it experimentally, and was surprised to find that the wound had gone and her leg moving naturally.

_No doubt some miracle medicine of the Doctor's, _she decided. On the table next of her was the crystal that had embedded itself in the leg. She gazed at it for a second, momentarily transfixed by the way the light danced around the tiny facets.

She widened her gaze and took in the whole room. Everything seemed sharper, clearer, more than it ever had been in her life. More..._ obvious_, she thought, for lack of a better word. As if the universe, over the course of her sleep, had decided to reveal its secrets to her and laid them for her to discover. It was as if she had lived her entire life with her mind tied up in a straitjacket, and suddenly she was free.

_Free_.

"Hello, Pond."

She turned around, and saw her Raggedy Doctor, alive, same as ever, leaning on the doorframe.

"Doctor!" She raced towards him and hugged him so fiercely they toppled over.

"Sorry," she said sheepishly as she disentangled herself from him. "Just relieved that you aren't, you know. Dead."

"Yes, it's a state that I'm all too happy to avoid," he said, a wry smile on his face. She laughed in relief. He did the same in response, and two of them found themselves unable to stop, her high girlish giggles and his deep guffaws intermingling and echoing throughout the TARDIS corridors.

"I tried to do CPR on you, you know. Bit stupid, I know, but hey, it worked. Just like in the movies," Amy eventually managed to say, when they finally calmed down.

The Doctor's smile vanished.

_Ah. So that's what happened. CPR... mouth to mouth,_ he calculated._ Yes, breath exchange would be a very good transfer mechanism for the energy. Very efficient. Just like with Rose._

Amy felt his sudden mood change, even though she hadn't even been looking at him. She sat up, concerned.

"Doctor? What is it? What's wrong?"

_Developing her psychic abilities rather quickly, _that curious, observant side of him realised, but he hid the thought.

"No, no nothing wrong." He paused. It was time, he realised, to say what he should have said at the start. "You remember when I told you I was nine hundred and seven, and you asked how someone like me managed to last so long?"

"Yeah, you said you were lucky. And that you didn't age," Amy replied.

"Well, correct on both counts, but that's not... the whole story."

Amy's eyes narrowed.

"Go on."

The Doctor looked down, unable to meet her piercing green eyes.

"Us Time Lords, when we - well, when we die, we don't just... die. We get another life, sort of. A new life. Same person, same personality, but a new body, and a new life. We call it regeneration."

"So that was how you came back to life," Amy said quietly, realisation sinking in. "And you were going to tell me this... when?", she asked, her tone rising. "I thought you were _dead!_"

"I'm sorry, Amy, I just... didn't want you thinking about it. About me dying." _Worst excuse ever, Doctor_.

"So why do you still look the same? New body, yeah? Bit coincidental that it looks the same as the old one." Suspicion and cynicism lay thick on every one of her syllables, and the Doctor winced.

_You have got to stop lying to your friends some day, Doctor, _he told himself, _and today would be a great day to start._

It was time she knew the truth. The whole truth.

"A full regeneration heals all my injuries and changes my appearance," he explained, "but I don't need a full regeneration to heal myself. Sometimes if there's a- a container, an outlet, for that excess energy to go into, I can heal myself without changing my appearance. That excess energy then... does its thing on... wherever it's gone." His voice was calm and steady, but beneath his brain was working in furious overdrive and his twin hearts beating at a ridiculous pace.

_It can't be, _he argued with himself._ She's human. Even if she completely absorbed all that energy, the chances of a perfect DNA rewrite are so small..._

_You felt them, Doctor_, a voice, born from his adventurous, starry-eyed side, said in answer to the cold logic. _Her pulse. Two heartbeats. You scanned her with the sonic. And the TARDIS. You can see it in her eyes, sharper, brighter, more perceptive than any humans. You can feel her psychic presence, reaching out, inadvertently trying to reach out to yours_. _Amy Pond is an impossible girl – what's another impossibility to her?_

"So where, Doctor, did it go?" Amy whispered, her voice thick with fear and apprehension.

He had to be sure before he could tell her, and there was only one way. Only one thing that only a Time Lord could understand.

He sat up and met her eyes, clear blue meeting vivid green. When he spoke it was a single word, but not in English. Rather, in a language that could only be understood by one kind of mind and, until a few hours ago, by only one person in the universe.

The lost language of the Time Lords.

"_**You."**_

* * *

><p>Amy Pond opened her mouth, slowly, but the words simply couldn't come out. Shock had robbed her of her ability to speak, to respond.<p>

_What the hell did he say? Well, he said "you". That's big in itself. But... what the hell did he say it... in? Maybe the TARDIS translated it. No. No, that's not right, because then I'd have heard it in English. And that sure as hell wasn't English_.

The Doctor smiled, as if... he could _sense_ her confusion. As if he _knew_.

"_**It's Gallifreyean, Amelia," **_he said softly, continuing in that same alien yet completely familiar tongue. **"****_The language of my people. Do you understand it?"_**

She opened her mouth, hesitated, and closed it. _It's impossible, Amy, _she told herself_. _She'd never head it before, so how could she possibly speak it? It was completely impossible.

_Impossible is nothing to Amy Pond_, she told the nagging voice. She took a deep breath.

"_**Yes." **_The word flowed off her tongue, effortlessly, as if it were a part of her very core. It was as if her entire existence was built around her being able to understand it, to _speak_ it. The Doctor's shoulders slumped, the tension flowing out of them.

_**No longer the last,**_**_ then_, **she heard in a distant corner of her mind.

She started. _Wait, _she thought, doing a mental double-take, _that wasn't me. The last what? I didn't think that. What...?_

She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. This was getting far too much for one day.

"When you tried to resuscitate me, the excess energy from my regeneration flowed from me into you. Mouth against mouth happens to make an excellent conductor for regeneration energy," the Doctor said quietly, returning to English, a faraway look etched on his face. He decided to avoid the word 'kiss', remembering the events of last month and not wanting to make the conversation more awkward and difficult than it already was. "So it entered you, and it... did its thing."

Amy ran her eyes over her own body, her hands, running her long, fiery hair between her fingers.

"But I still look the same. I haven't changed."

"No, you haven't. There wasn't enough energy to do that on top of what it had to do."

"Do what, Doctor? Stop stalling." Amy snapped.

_Still got that temper, then_, he realised with wry amusement.

"A regeneration, Amy, isn't cosmetic surgery. We're talking a full DNA rewrite. And regeneration energy is only meant for Time Lords." He paused, letting the words sink in. Now that he knew for sure what had happened, he knew she would be able to work it out for herself.

Amy's eyes widened in realisation. She felt for her chest. _Thump-thump-thump-thump_. A rhythm of four. Two heartbeats.

"So I'm..." she whispered. The Doctor nodded. "And you... you aren't..."

**"****_Correct, Amelia. I'm not the last Time Lord._****"** he replied in Gallifreyean.

**"****_Oi, that's Time Lady to you,"_** she shot back.

"Scottish accented Gallifreyean. In nine hundred and seven years, I have to admit, that's one I didn't see coming." Unable to stop themselves, both Time Lord and Time Lady burst out laughing. And this time, they didn't stop.

* * *

><p><strong>I know I take a slight liberty with canon at the end, but just roll with it (thanks to Marcus S. Lazarus for pointing it out).<strong>

****Reviews are fantastic.**  
><strong>


	3. Welcome To The Club

**Wow, didn't expect that response after just half a day! Cheers, people. Still have no clue where I'm going with this long term, but that just means I'll be able to enjoy the ride too. Pleased not to have any formatting complaints yet.**

**Oh, and if someone comes up with a better title for this chapter then I'll not hesitate to change it.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 3. Welcome To The Club: 22 August 2010<br>**

"So does this make me a weirdo like you then? Am I gonna start wearing bowties now?"

"Amy!" The Doctor snapped his eyes to the ginger, a look of mock hurt on his face. "No, unfortunately. You should, though. They're cool."

Amy simply rolled her eyes.

They were in the console room. They had taken their time making their way down there, as Amy had constantly been distracted by the complex array of symbols on the corridor walls, which we now knew were Gallifreyean writings. To her amusement, she'd found that nearly all of them were directions to the console room, and had had a jolly good time teasing the Doctor about not knowing the way around his own home after seven centuries. He'd tried to retort that _his_ home had hundreds of rooms that he knew of, probably had thousands more he hadn't explored, and endless miles of corridors. Unfortunately for him, his protests had fallen rather flat when Amy spotted one of the markers opposite his bedroom door.

"So, apart from being able to understand Time Lord speak-"

"Gallifreyean, Amy."

"Right, that. Apart from that, what else can I do?"

The Doctor smiled fondly at her. She may have changed species, but she was still the same stubborn, contradictory, Scottish-accented ginger who had hit him with a cricket bat.

"Probably best that you read a book for that, Amy. But for starters, you have psychic ability like me now, you can sense people's emotions and communicate telepathically if you touch them."

"You can't see into my brain right now, can you? I mean, two telepaths in one room, surely they've gotta, you know, interact."

The Doctor laughed, missing the note of worry in her voice.

"I see you've inherited a Time Lord intellect too-"

"Time _Lady _intellect, mister," Amy corrected, her eyes glinting mischievously.

"Right, sorry," He was still struggling to get his head around the idea that he was no longer the last of his species, and was finding it difficult to get out of the habit of referring to them all by the male of the species.

_Now is not the time to be starting a Gallifreyean feminist movement,_ he reminded himself.

"I can't see into your head yet," he said. "Eventually we'll be able to communicate through our thoughts. You still have to learn how to do it... and I have to remember how. It's been a long time since there was another Time _Lady_ around for me to communicate with..." Knowing that he was no longer the last of his kind didn't yet ease the pain of what had been done. What _he'd_ done.

_Possibly due to the fact that you've never met anyone from Gallifrey anything like Amelia Pond_, he mused.

Amy sensed his drifting off and snapped her fingers.

"Oi! Not done yet. What else?"

"What? Oh, sorry. Yes. Telepathic... stuff. All your senses are sharper, if you may have noticed. Especially taste and smell, you'll be amazed what you can find out once I teach you how-"

"-but fish fingers still won't go with custard, I'm sure-" Amy muttered.

"-and you already know about regeneration, but I don't know how many of those you have. Best we don't find out the hard way. Oh, and you don't age at all... oh." He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening in shock, as the full magnitude of what had taken place finally had taken home.

_Rory.  
><em>

Amy had told him about her fiancée a few weeks previously, and whilst he'd been surprised (and somewhat alarmed) to learn that the "stuff" she'd referred to was in fact her wedding day, he'd barely given thought to it since. He was, after all, in a time machine and "tomorrow morning" wasn't a phrase that had much meaning to him. Now, however...

Amy Pond, immortal Time Lady, never changing, never aging, always the same, was engaged to Rory Williams, mortal, human, aging. How could he be so blind?

_How do I tell her?_

Amy narrowed her eyes.

"Oh what?"

Her voice wrenched the Doctor out of his train of thought. "Nothing. Just boring stuff, you know. Anyway, that's basically all there is to it. I think."

"Right," Amy still looked sceptical, but didn't push the matter further, much to the Doctor's surprise and gratitude. "I guess there's a Time Lord 101 textbook around here somewhere?"

"In the library, yeah. Don't know where it is, never opened it myself. The TARDIS'll know, though." He smiled and waved after her as she ascended the staircase.

As soon as she left down the corridor, his smile vanished and he collapsed into his chair, sighing as he held his head in his hands.

_Oh Pond. What have I done to you?_

He leant back and sighed.

_I really don't know what to do now... hey, that's a new feeling, _he realised, briefly perking up before coming back to his senses and lightly slapping himself in admonishment. It began to dawn on him the consequences of her mistake – of his lie.

_She's engaged to Rory. She belongs to him, she needs to be with him._

_Does she?_ A small, dark whisper arose from a previously unnoticed corner of his mind.

_Yes. She's getting married to him in the morning._

_Then why did she run away with you?__ On the eve of her own wedding? _

It was a fair question, he realised, and one that demanded a proper answer. _I gave her all of time and space, _he answered._ Everything that ever happened or ever will. How could she resist?_

_You made her wait twelve years, _the voice pointed out._ Then another two. Her entire childhood, waiting for her Raggedy Doctor. What's another day?_

_She didn't exactly tell me straight away. I only found out about it a few weeks ago._

_And then she tried to seduce you, _the voice replied.

Anger flashed briefly within him, irrational and dark._ Shouldn't she be the one asking these questions?_

_She has been. She's been asking them from the moment she stepped in. You know that. You can see it deep within her eyes. Quite beautiful eyes they are, really,_ the dark voice continued.

_Stop it. Right now. I WILL take her back to Leadworth to marry Rory, _he resolved forcefully.

_And then what?_

He paused for a moment, knowing what was coming. _And then...  
><em>

_She's a Time Lord, _the voice reminded him._ Telepathic. Two-hearted. Immortal. There is nothing you can do to change that._

He hesitated.

_So? Rory can still live a long and happy life with her._

_And so Rory will live a long and happy with her, and hopefully die a natural death in fifty, sixty, seventy years. Amy, however..._

The dark voice trailed off, leaving the rest unsaid.

_She'll find someone else. There's six billion people on that planet right now, and there'll be about ten billion by that time._ He received a laugh in response, bitter and cruel, born out of nine centuries of self-hatred and regret.

_Really, Doctor. I know you go through women quickly – _another flash of anger – _but, really? Maybe you'll drop on her in the year 3000 and find her on her fifteenth husband._

_Well, what choice do I have? She's Amelia Pond, engaged to Rory Williams, and most definitely not engaged to The Doctor. Where does she belong, if not in Leadworth? _Impotent fury rippled through his thoughts now, his self-control withering.

_Here._ _In the TARDIS. Like all Time Lords._

He breathed in deep, searching his mind desperately for a response, refusing to give in, to accept.

"Doctor?"

He shot bolt upright, stiffening as if he had been subjected to a huge electric shock. He actually stood so quickly that he immediately lost his balance and tumbled awkwardly back onto the seat. Amy giggled, but concern was etched in her gaze.

"Amy!" He righted himself, massaging the crumples in his tweed jacket. "Did you find the manuals?"

"Eventually. No thanks to you, hiding them behind a ten foot wall of books," she replied, dry amusement in her tone. Her wry smile faded. "Are you OK?"

"Yes! Yes, I'm fine," he assured her a little too quickly.

"Sure? I mean, I just had this feeling that you were getting angry about something. Bit weird, I know, from all the way over in the library, but, y'know, female intuition."

He forced a laugh and a smile. "Psychic resonances from the time vortex," he lied. "Nothing to worry about. Now, to the library and let's teach you Time Lord 101."

She giggled and turned back up the stairs to head back to the library. He followed, unseen helplessness and worry written in every young line of his ancient face.

Quite simply, he had no idea what to do.

* * *

><p><strong>Reviews are great.<strong>_  
><em>


	4. The Sonic Phone

**I'll admit it, I pretty much straight up stole the central idea in this chapter from The Girl Who Waited. Far, far, far too good to pass up. Updates will slow after this chapter, whilst I work out where the story is going in the short to medium term.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 4. The Sonic Phone: 28 September 2010<br>**

Amy's new-found abilities developed quickly over the following weeks under the Doctor's careful tuition. It wasn't all smooth sailing – more than once, the pair had gotten into rather heated disagreements over the meaning of a certain smell, or the function of a certain level on the TARDIS. Naturally, with over nine hundred years of experience, the Doctor was convinced he was right, and equally naturally, Amy (being Amy) was equally convinced _she_ was correct.

The arguments concluded after a rather heated row over the function of a thin golden lever which the Doctor swore was completely useless, but Amy steadfastly insisted that it was the secondary chameleon circuit, something the Doctor quickly resolved never to use. Amy gave the Doctor a glare that he suspected would make a Dalek beg for mercy, and he quickly bottled any further arguments he might have had.

"Time Lord or not," she'd heard him muttering, "I'm having nothing to do with that look ever again."

To his immense irritation, he discovered that she had been correct after the TARDIS turned itself into a passable impersonation of a large hedge whilst they were defeating the Ophiotaur, an alien that had been accidentally causing wildfires in Ancient Greece with its ten-foot flaming tail. Having quite literally buried the problem by sealing it in an underground cave, they spent two days fruitlessly searching for the police box.

Eventually, Amy's patience had run out and she'd leaned back, exhausted, on an innocent-looking hedgerow only to find herself falling backwards into the TARDIS console room. The Doctor quickly set about removing the rod after using it to revert the big blue box back to its big blue box form, muttering darkly to himself and refusing to acknowledge the ginger's slightly smug smile.

"Damned manuals," he'd growled as he'd piloted them away.

Some weeks after the incident, Amy found herself sitting in her favourite plush TARDIS-blue armchair besides the sparkling blue waters of the swimming pool, flicking through the pages of the ancient, dusty tome. Information poured into her head, the alien curls, circles and dots imprinting themselves effortlessly in her forever altered brain.

_Hmm, sonic screwdriver, ought to get myself one of those, _she mused.After all, the Doctor used his often enough – it could hardly hurt to have two. She flicked over the page, finding dozens of diagrams and associated annotations. Based on the instructions, construction looked easy enough, requiring only an electronic transmitter and some king of crystal –_ hey!_

Excited by the sudden idea that had flashed up in her mind, she pulled out her plain old mobile phone, examining it as if she'd never seen it before.

_And to think I used to spend hours lying on bed texting Rory with this thing_.

Buzzing with energy, she dropped the oversized manual on the couch and raced out of the library.

* * *

><p>For the Doctor, teaching Amy the ins and outs of Time Lord theory and how to utilise her almost-unique abilities was an immensely rewarding experience – if at times immensely frustrating, as often happened when dealing with the fire-haired Scottish now-Time Lady. Her delight when he taught her how to tell the date simply by smelling the air triggered recollections of his own wonder upon learning the same thing so many centuries previously, and he counted himself truly blessed to be have been able to experience the feeling once again.<p>

More importantly, however, it allowed him both a useful distraction and breathing space to think about the dilemma that had been plaguing him for weeks.

On three separate occasions he'd resolved to fly the TARDIS back to Leadworth to pick up Rory and force the issue – but at the last moment stopped himself with his hand on the take-off lever, caving into his doubts. Amy, thankfully, remained blissfully unaware. He'd been very careful to shield his less-than-sunny emotions from her telepathic abilities – which were developing at a scarcely believable rate, even for a Time Lord – ever since he'd almost been caught out. She seemed to be returning the favour even more forcefully, something which surprised and alarmed him slightly.

Engrossed in his own thoughts, he forgot to take a right-hand turn at a corridor junction that would have led him back to his own room, and instead ended up somewhere completely different. Another bedroom, in fact.

Amy's bedroom.

_Oops, _he thought, his eyes wide and his pulse quickening. Mercifully, the room was empty, giving him a chance to thank his lucky stars and slink quietly away.

His natural curiosity got the better of him, however, and he crept inside. He kept his footfalls light, as if she were asleep in the empty bed and any undue noise would wake her and make her take his head off. As he did so, he took a moment to glance around the room, taking it in the for the first time.

Predictably, the room had been painted TARDIS blue. The blankets in the four-poster bed were unmade, having been roughly tossed aside. _Clearly not one for neatness_, he noted with amusement. The bedside table held a simple leather-bound TARDIS-blue diary and a photograph, one he recognised from last month's trip to Polaris X. Amy was smiling peacefully at the camera, the brilliant white light illuminating her from behind. He could see himself in the background, giving a thumbs-up with a goofy grin plastered on his face. He smiled fondly at the memory.

He was about to turn and leave, but his gaze caught something resting beneath the table. A small red box.

_Is that...?_

He moved slowly towards the table and bent down to pick it up. It was obvious that it had fallen there some weeks previously and had remained unmoved, unnoticed since then. He opened it slowly, his hands trembling.

A jewel encrusted golden ring lay within, the soft light of the room reflecting entrancingly from its surface. He stared it for a good minute before snapping the box shut and laying it on the table, his expression hardened.

_Enough.  
><em>

He raced back to the control room. This time, there was no hesitation in pulling down the green lever to take the time machine back to the 25th of June, 2010, and a small English village named Leadworth.

* * *

><p>Amy stood, wiping the thick layer of sweat off her brow. The TARDIS workshop bench was covered in wires, pieces of circuitry and alien tools. The disassembled remains of an old radio that had previously lived in the pool room lay on the bench, next to the mangled pieces of a small LCD television set which had been plucked from a dusty storeroom.<p>

It had taken _much_ longer than she initially hoped (_which idiot had_ _had the brilliant idea of putting the microphone and speaker on the same circuit?_), but after several hours of careful prying, more than a few of the angry expletive-filled rants only a Scot could muster and the occasional use of a hammer, she was brimming with excitement at her handiwork. She lifted her phone – her _sonic_ phone – although it was almost unrecognisable as such, with wires and strange pieces of metal wrapped around its body, a sparkling purple crystal attached to the end. The same one, in fact, that had once embedded itself in her right thigh.

She sucked in her breath, pointing the device at a drawer of nails, and pushed the '5' button on the phone. In response, she heard a familiar buzzing noise and saw a bright purple light blazing from the end of the device. Instantly, the drawer burst open, the collection of bolts it held spraying themselves across the room. She giggled and did the same to all the other drawers in the TARDIS workshop. They flew open in exactly the same manner, depositing their contents across the polished concrete floor.

Peals of laughter bouncing about the room, she experimented with all the buttons on her phone, watching as various devices and tools lit up, shot about, unfolded and glowed in every imaginable colour, sparks flying across the floor. Amongst the din, she didn't notice the Doctor tramping in the corridor beyond, barrelling into the room.

"Pond! There you are. Where have-"

His stopped mid-sentence, eyes wide with shock as he noticed the state of the room.

"What in the _world_ have you been doing here?"

Amy spun around in her chair, the slightest tinge of an embarrassed flush creeping into her cheeks.

"Doctor! Erm..." She trailed off, unsure how to explain.

"How did you get here? What – _what_ – have you been doing?" he inquired, stunned disbelief written across her face.

Amy fought the urge to laugh. "Just, you know, experimenting."

"You were _experimenting?"_

She gave him a dazzling smile and held up her phone. Her sonic phone.

The Doctor's eyes narrowed as he caught sight of the strange, mangled device, and then widened again, as wide as Amy had ever seen them. He pointed at it, his hand trembling. "You – you turned your phone into a..."

She nodded. Fumbling in his jacket, he pulled out his own sonic screwdriver and scanned the phone with it. Inspecting the results, a broad grin grew on his face.

"You did. You really did. You turned your phone into a sonic, er-"

"Sonic phone. It still gets reception." A sharp laugh escaped his lips, and he scanned it again.

"No psychic interface, so how..." he muttered, inspecting the scan results. "Oh. Ah. That's... brilliant. The keypad controls the frequencies. Amelia Pond, you are brilliant and magnificent. Come here," he said joyfully, opening her arms as she threw herself around him. He spun her around dizzyingly, her laughter mingling with his. "How did you do that, anyway? Making sonic screwdrivers – sonic _phones_, sorry," correcting himself after Amy shot him a withering glance "isn't something you just pick up on the fly." Amy laughed.

"Doctor, _some_ of us actually read the instructions, you know," she replied, amusement twinkling in her vivid green eyes.

"Very funny, Pond," he retorted, unable to keep the broad grin off his face. He looked at his ginger-haired friend, their gaze locking together. For the briefest instant, they both thought – no, they _felt_ something shift deep within the other, a connection bridging the deepest part of the two souls, Time Lord to Time Lady.

Amy blinked, the strange feeling disappearing at once.

"So, you wanted to see me about something?" Amy asked.

The Doctor's smile froze in place. He'd completely forgotten about why he'd come here. _Rory_.

"Yes," he replied, keeping his voice falsely bright and cheery. "Come along Pond. Oh, and you're cleaning that up, by the way," he remarked as he led her out of the room.

* * *

><p><strong>Astute, knowledgeable readers will note that in the extremely unlikely chance that Polaris <em>does<em> have a stable planetary system, any planet will be absolutely certainly _not_ a place you would want to visit. Ever. Put it down to creative license and all that.**


	5. Awkward Silences

**Okay, okay, I lied. But not deliberately - it's just that I suddenly got a sense of where this was going for the next little while. I assure you, the update frequency will drop off quite sharply soon.**

**Apologies if there seems to be a lot of talking and a lot of covering-old-ground. I know it says "Adventure" on the tin and I promise we'll get back to the running soon, but there's some important stuff I need to get down first.**

**As always, reviews and advice loved.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 5. Awkward Silences: 28 September 2010<br>**

The twenty-three year old man paced the console room nervously. He wasn't a naturally curious person, and he definitely didn't want to touch the array of odd buttons, levers and various implements on the central console for fear of blowing something up, or sending them into a supernova.

Unlike most who entered the TARDIS for the first time, Rory Williams didn't find himself over-awed by the impossibility of being inside a box that was bigger on the inside. He'd done a lot of research after the events of two years previous, and wasn't going to be caught unawares again.

He glanced up at the oddly makeshift calendar-clock on the wall. _Two hours._ He said he'd be five minutes.

_Where the hell is he? And where's Amy?_

Just as he was about to lose patience and leave, he heard a familiar peal of laughter from one of the entrances above him. A very familiar laugh. _Amy!_

"So now you're not the only one who can wave it about showing off," he heard her say, voice tinged with smugness.

"Hey, mine is shiny and green. Yours is all pink and purple and wire-y and... stuff." the Doctor's voice retorted.

"Oh shut up," she replied, laughing, as she appeared at the top of the stairway. She caught sight of the young, large-nosed man and gasped, freezing in place. "Rory? What are you doing here?" Her eyes widened as the truth dawned on her. She rounded immediately on the Doctor.

"You're taking me home, aren't you?" she whispered demandingly.

"Amy," the Doctor replied, trying to soothe her.

"Don't _Amy_ me. I'm not going home. I'm _not_ going back. Not now. Not yet." Her voice rose with every syllable.

The Doctor held her arm, causing a stab of envy and suspicion to shoot briefly through Rory - but he held himself back.

"Amy, I'm not taking you home. I just need you to... have a chat." She was refusing to meet the Doctor's imploring eyes, but he continued nonetheless. "Amelia, please. This is important. What happened to you... we have to sort this out _now_." Hearing him, the suspicion flared in Rory's eyes.

"Sort _what_ out, Doctor? What happened to her? What have you _done_ to her?" Despite his best efforst, he couldn't keep the trace of anger out of his voice.

The Doctor closed his eyes and sighed.

"I can explain, Rory."

"It had better be a _damn_ good explanation."

Another sigh. "Please, Rory, let's just sit down."

Rory stared at the Doctor's, gazing at his eyes as if trying to probe into his mind through them. Finding nothing untoward, he nodded tersely and took Amy arm.

He didn't miss how, for an instant, she had flinched at his touch as he took her down the stairs.

* * *

><p><em>This has got to be the most awkward silence of my life, <em>the Doctor thought, leaning against the console.

Amy and Rory were perched on opposite ends of the couch, board-stiff and adamantly refusing to meet each other's eyes. Amy had folded her legs over and was examining her hands as if searching for some valuable jewels hidden within.

At last, Rory broke the increasingly-unbearable silence.

"So..."

"So."

"What have you done to her?"

The Doctor sighed. "Rory, it's a _long_ story."

The young man folded his arms and leaned back on the railing. His eyes were narrowed with suspicion.

"Fine by me. Actually, no, first-" he said, turning to Amy with outrage still glimmering in his pale blue eyes, "-what were _you _doing? We're getting married tomorrow, in case you had forgotten."

Amy swallowed nervously, still staring intently at her long, pale hands. "It's not like that. Please, Rory. It isn't like that."

"Well what is it then? What else is it _supposed _to be? You ran off with another man before your wedding night, _what am I supposed to think?"_ He tried to keep his voice level and stable, but his control was nowhere near adequate, and by the end he was effectively shouting at her. Amy's eyes flashed dangerously and she snapped her gaze to his for the first time.

"_It's not like that!"_

"Rory." The Doctor's voice came in between them, softly, cutting through the sparks he could feel flying between the pair. "Please, listen. There is _nothing_ going on between Amy and I of that kind. She came with me because she wanted to see the universe, all of space and time. She made me promise to return her to Leadworth, and you, first."

As he spoke, the Time Lord had pushed the memory of the kiss and attempted seduction out of his mind – he knew well that she was deeply, deeply embarrassed about the whole affair and out of kindness he had chosen to file it under _things we do not talk about, ever._

Rory's piercing gaze searched his ancient eyes, mining them for any trace of a lie, for any hint of insincerity. After what seemed an age, it softened.

"Fine. I believe you. For now." The young man folded his arms together. "But you still haven't answered my first question – what have you done with her? There's a reason I'm here. I'm not stupid, you know."

"Of course not," the Doctor said sincerely. On first - well, second - impressions, he quite liked Rory. He'd been most surprised, impressed, though deeply irritated when the young man had more or less taken the nature of the TARDIS interior completely in his stride. _And I was so looking forward to that too._ "As I said, it's a long story."

"And as _I_ said, fine by me."

The Doctor sighed. "Alright. What happened was that we went to a planet called Krylos to look at the universe's largest super-sized amethyst crystal forest." Rory blinked, processing the idea, then nodded.

"Go on."

"Well, bad stuff happened and I got hurt a bit. Well, more than a bit. Fatally injured, if we're being precise."

"But you're still here. And sort of alive."

"Yes. But my kind – we're called Time Lords, by the way, from the planet Gallifrey – well, we don't just _die_ when injured like that. When we get fatally injured, we get a brand new body." He paused for a moment to let the information sink in.

"Right," Rory said slowly. "But I don't see what this has to do with Amy," he pointed out. He glanced over at his fiancée, who had resumed her thorough inspection of her fingertips.

The Doctor swallowed. _Here comes the hard bit_.

"She didn't know this. She genuinely thought I was dying, and tried to resuscitate me. In the process, she inadvertently absorbed almost all my regeneration energy – that is, the energy that heals me and gives me a new body. For me, that meant that all my severe injuries were healed, but I didn't get a new body."

"And... for her?"

The Doctor closed his eyes. _You can't tell him this, _he realised._ You have to show him_.

"Amy, give him your hand."

"What?" Telepathically, he could feel Amy's attention shift instantaneously to him. "Why?" Her voice could burn a hole in a wall, but the Doctor was in no mood for an argument.

"_**Amelia, do it.**_**" **In Gallifreyean, the sharpness of his voice became even more pronounced – so much so that Rory (who of course had never heard a language even remotely like the one he'd just heard) recoiled slightly.

Amy, cowed for once, slowly offered her right arm for Rory to take.

"Check her pulse, Rory," the Doctor said quietly.

Rory took her wrist and expertly found what he was looking for.

"It's fine. I don't see the- hang on." His voice had changed completely - clearly, he'd noticed the strange rhythm beneath his fingers. He moved closer to Amy and felt the left side of the chest. "A normal heartbeat, so what the hell...?_" _

Trembling, he shifted his palm ever so gradually to the other side of her chest and felt another heart, beating at the same pace but out of sync as teh first. He turned slowly to face the Doctor, hot fury rising in his eyes.

"What the hell's happened to her?"

"A regeneration is only meant for a Time Lord," Rory heard a soft voice murmur beside him. He turned to met his fiancée's level gaze, her face unreadable. "And when a regeneration occurs, the energy rewrites your entire DNA."

"And so...?" he inquired softly, fearfully.

"And so..." She swallowed, knowing that this would be one of the hardest sentences of her life. "So... I'm not human any more."

Silence.

* * *

><p>"No."<p>

Amy simply nodded.

"No. No, it can't be."

"Rory, I'm sorry," the Doctor began quietly, "but-"

"_Don't talk to me!"_

"Rory," Amy crooned soothingly. "Rory, please. It's not his fault. It was my mistake, and besides, you wouldn't believe the things I can do now. The things I can see, hear. The things I can _feel._"

Rory seemed to barely hear her. He fixed his smouldering gaze on the Doctor.

"So, what is she now? Some sort of... of... human-Time Lord hybrid?" He almost spat the last four words.

The Doctor just sighed. He couldn't possibly be angry or indignant at the young man, since he knew full well that Amy was wrong – the situation was his fault and his alone.

"No, but that has happened once. The results were... interesting, let's say," he replied wistfully, remembering Donna and his own half-human clone that he'd marooned with Rose in a parallel universe, "but Amy's not like that. She's a full blown Time Lord-"

"Time _Lady, _mister," Amy interjected. The Doctor had to smile at her stubbornness despite the tenseness of the situation.

"Sorry, Amy. She's a full blown Time Lady now. She's basically like me, biologically, in every respect. Except she's a girl. And, well, she's Amy."

Rory seemed to calm at his words, but he remained suspicious. "And what, exactly, is the difference?"

"Well, for one, she's telepathic – and quite a good one, too, by Time Lord standards. She can automatically feel the emotions of the people around her, and can share and sense thoughts and memories with anyone simply by touching them. Eventually she'll be able to communicate telepathically with other psychically aware beings-"

"-like Time Lords?"

"Yeah, like me," he continued, catching Rory's drift. "On top of that, she's completely fluent in Gallifreyean, the language of the Time Lords, in speech and writing. You might have heard me speaking in it before," he said, pausing to allow Rory to nod his understanding.

He decided to continue. "All her senses, but especially taste and small, are way more advanced and more perceptive than any human's. She's now technically proficient in Gallifreyean technology, and she's already made a few things that require Time Lord construction techniques. Although she won't be winning art prizes any time soon," he remarked, glancing up at the strange clock on the wall and at the bulge in her skirt pocket where the sonic _phone_ was. "There's a few more things on the same lines, but those are the biggies. Lastly..."

He stopped, pausing before giving the final life-changing revelation. _And haven't there been a few of those today?_

"...yes?" Rory didn't need to be telepathic to sense his hesitation.

"She has no body clock. She won't age at all. Technically, she's immortal – although I haven't worked out what's going on with regeneration yet. I'd rather not find out, frankly."

* * *

><p>Rory leaned back on the railing, massaging his temples. His brain felt like it was close to overloading and shorting out from being assaulted by life-changing revelation after life-changing revelation. He closed his eyes to try and make sense of everything that had happened, everything he'd learned.<p>

He didn't like that she'd run away with another man - despite knowing that the Doctor was a centuries-old alien, he still couldn't help but think of him as a man. Especially now that his fiancée was the same kind of alien as well.

He didn't like that Amy had not one but two methods of communicating with that other man in a way that he couldn't, and he _definitely_ didn't like that one of those methods could take place without him knowing anything about it.

He didn't like that she was obviously being exposed to extreme danger on a fairly regular basis, remembering what happened with Prisoner Zero, and very aware that whatever had fatally injured the Doctor could have fatally injured her.

_And she didn't have extra lives, did she? Not then, anyway._

However, he _knew_ Amy – rather, he knew as well as anyone could, for she had been a deeply and stubbornly closed girl for her whole life. He knew what her Raggedy Doctor had meant to her. He knew that if he had showed up with his big blue box promising to show her the universe whilst she was saying her vows, she wouldn't have thought twice about running away. He'd seen the happiness in her eyes as she'd walked down the steps and heard the earnestness in her voice as she'd told him how amazing she was finding the experience of being an alien. Whatever made her happy made him happy and he knew, somehow, that she'd never been happier in her whole life than when she was gallivanting about time and space with a man wearing a bow-tie.

And now he'd learned that she was immortal_. So I guess that makes marrying her kind of difficult,_ he realised._ apart from the fact she's an alien. _He'd die quietly, normally, and she'd just live on, and on, and on. How could they grow old together when she couldn't even grow old?

"Rory." Amy's voice came soft, beckoning, slicing through his confusion and torment. "Rory, please. Listen to me. Yeah, I might not be human, and marriage might be... complicated. But I _promise _you, I'm still Amy, and I am still yours. Please."

She grabbed his hand with both of hers and drew it against her chest. He could feel the gentle double heartbeat there, reminding him of how she had irrevocably changed. He looked up into her eyes, desperate and imploring. They hadn't changed, he noticed – still the most beautiful things he'd ever seen.

Finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, he nodded. She squeezed his hand tightly and let go. He stood.

"I should go – people will probably have noticed that I've disappeared for a few hours by now." He turned to head towards the door, but Amy stood and grabbed his arm, pulling him back.

"Rory, could you... stay? With us, for a while? I'd really love that."

He considered it briefly. He'd never been an adventurous man, and was apprehensive about the sort of dangerous lifestyle this all entailed, but he could see how much Amy wanted it, and he was loath to be separated from her again.

Alien or not, she was still his fiancée.

He looked over at the Doctor. The Doctor smiled sincerely back at him, seemingly happy that at least some of the difficulty of the situation had been resolved.

"Yeah. Yeah, sure. That'd be great."

Amy's face brightened instantly, a smile appearing on it for the first time since she'd seen him at the base of the stairs. She drew him into a tight hug. "I have to go clean up the workshop. Go explore, but be careful in the library. The swimming pool changes shape from time to time when you aren't looking." She let go and bounded up the stairs, pausing briefly at the top and spinning around.

"Well, look at this! Got my spaceship, got my boys. What more does a girl need?" She laughed and skipped down the corridor. Rory rolled his eyes.

"We are _not_ her boys."

The Doctor chuckled and set about piloting the TARDIS away from Leadworth. "Yeah, we are."

"Yeah..." he repeated, "we are."

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<br>**


	6. Mistaken Identity

**See? Told you there'd be adventures soon. I'm a man of my word... mostly. I should note right now that I come from a harder sci-fi background (also being a fledgling scientist myself), so my adventures are more likely to have a sci-fi feel to them.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 6. Mistaken Identity: 11 October 2010<br>**

Rory settled quickly into TARDIS life. He'd been delighted to discover that the pool room had a wide-screen TV streaming English football from his timezone, meaning that he managed to catch every single match "live". The Doctor pointed out that he was in a _time machine_ and they could just jump forward a year to catch the results. Rory had just looked at him as if he had completely lost his mind.

Amy, meanwhile, was trying her hardest to act normal - normal for her, anyway - but little things continued to remind him that his fiancée was an alien. Her sleeping patterns, for one, were completely screwed up in his view. She'd lie awake for hours, restless, her Time Lord brain buzzing, before mercifully falling asleep. Less than four hours later – often less than three – she'd be up again, buzzing with energy.

Equally annoying was her habit of playing with her sonic phone at every opportunity. She hadn't yet quite worked out what each button or key combination did yet, but she was determined to find out. The results were unpredictable, to put it mildly. He didn't think he'd ever get over the shock of the microwave exploding, the macaroni bake he'd been warming for lunch smeared all over the opposite wall.

He didn't really mind, though. He'd accepted long ago when he'd fallen for such a mad Scottish girl (her words, although he didn't ever repeat them back to her for fear of physical harm) that there would be a few odd idiosyncrasies that he'd have to deal with. Mostly he was just happy that he was there with her, and that she was happy too.

The Doctor had taken them to various romantic jaunts including 19th century Paris and 15th century Venice – although the latter had included a run-in with a group of what had appeared to be vampires. Closer inspection (by means of Amy's boot) had revealed them to be over-sized alien fish people (of course). After the Doctor had disabled their weather-control machine and given them a _very_ stern telling off, they returned to their holiday.

Now, however, Amy was thoroughly bored of Earth for the time being.

"Please, Doctor. It's great that you're giving Rory and I all these treats, but can we _please_ go to a planet now? Otherwise I'll fly to one myself and god knows we're we'll end up."

The Doctor sighed. He knew she wasn't joking – just last week he'd needed to intervene at the very last second after she'd almost piloted them into an erupting volcano.

"Alright, alright. Any suggestions? Preferences?"

"Make it a good one. And no giant exploding crystals, please."

* * *

><p>She stood in the open courtyard, staring at the blue-tinged star. She could feel it searing her eyes, just as all her teachers had told her it would all those years ago, but she didn't care. If this really was the End of Days, and the last time she'd see Zvezda, the light of her world, the source of all the life of her planet, she wanted to savour it, burnt retinas or not.<p>

_Not like it'll matter in a few days, anyway_.

"Madam Secretary? General Gordost is calling for you,"

She sighed. What was the point of this?

_Our fleet is destroyed, our factories ruined, and They are only a few days from this solar system._ She shook her head, clearing her mind. It didn't matter now. She had a job to do, and she would do it to the bitter end.

She closed her eyes and headed back into the gradiose marble building. Exuding a purposefulness she didn't feel at all inside, she headed towards the Central Office where she knew the General would be waiting for her.

"Secretary Heviniye. Good to see you," General Gordost straightened from the holograms he'd been inspecting as she walked in. He unleashed a military precision salute upon sighting her which she half-heartedly returned.

"Same to you, General. What's the matter? Aside from being days away from total annihilation, that is."

"The latest scout parties have returned, Secretary."

She groaned inwardly. _Not this ridiculous nonsense again. _

"And what did they find? Something interesting, I hope." She was trying her utmost to keep her voice level instead of dripping with sarcasm.

The General's lip curled. "Actually, this time, yes." He pushed a few buttons on a console, and a three-dimensional hologram filled the room. Heviniye's eyes widened.

"Well, well." she murmured. "It seems you were right after all, General."

* * *

><p>Rory's neck was aching, his eyes having been raised skyward for a good twenty minutes now. Unfathomably tall edifices of glittering glass surrounded him, reflecting the dazzling light of the blue star. The tops of each building were fashioned into the most wonderful, complex architectural shapes that were surely beyond the ability of any human engineer of his time, twisting and curving into all kinds of helical, spiral and other mind bending designs.<p>

"Beautiful, aren't they? The stroyeteli are famed for their architects. And their steak and kidney pies, for that matter. Mm, I could do with one of those now..." the Doctor mused, trailing off into a long-winded ramble about the various culinary delights of the city they'd landed in.

"How do they curve the glass like that and get it to stay upright?" Rory wondered after a few minutes, gazing up at a particularly tall skyscraper whose peak reminded him of an unfolded lotus flower.

"Ah well, you see, they use a special kind of tempered glass that so happens to be incredibly strong but very easy to bend. To make it, they melt ordinary glass and at the specific temperature of three thousand, seven hundred and fourteen degrees, add three apples, and freeze at minus twenty, and hey presto-"

"Rhetorical question, Doctor."

"Right. Sorry."

The protestations in Rory's neck finally won out and he leveled his eyes, flexing his neck to try and dull the insistent ache that had lodged itself there.

"Looks busy," he commented, as throngs of black-attired stroyeteli milled about, just as they would in central New York or London. "Must be the end of their lunch break." He glanced at a stroyeteli who was standing at the edge of the sidewalk, presumably waiting for his equivalent of a bus. He, like all the others, had twelve fingers, six on each hand. Otherwise, however, he was completely indistinguishable from an ordinary human.

"Interesting," the Doctor muttered beside him.

"What's interesting?"

"Have a look at them, Rory. Something's not quite right here."

"What d'you mean?"

"See how they walk. They're just walking normally, slowly, without purpose. Surely if this were the end of their lunch break, some of them would be late? And would be rushing to get back to work and not get yelled at by their boss?"

Rory looked closer. He noticed that everyone seemed to be looking down, their eyes devoid of any energy or life. There was something that seemed oddly like resignation in them, as if they knew that what they doing was completely worthless. "Maybe the work here is just really, really dull."

"Maybe."

The pair continued on down the street for another few minutes, the Doctor occasionally pointing a particularly unusual building and going on some technical ramble about its construction that caused Rory's eyes to glaze over. He had just finished expounding about a type of polished concrete that used ripe cherries in its manufacture when he suddenly stopped in his tracks.

"Rory, where'd Amy go?"

"Oh, she went to get her sonic phone. She's obsessed with that thing," Rory replied absent-mindedly.

"Over half an hour ago."

"She's not great at finding stuff, Doctor," he reminded the Time Lord, but the Doctor remained perturbed.

"How far do you think we've walked from the TARDIS?"

Rory paused to contemplate. "Half an hour wandering in the middle of a busy city... I'd say about half a mile?"

"Half a mile..."

Rory sighed. "Doctor, what is it? What's the problem? Can't you use your telepathic stuff to find her?"

The Doctor shook his head. "She's a good telepath, but she hasn't developed that side of it properly yet. I can only sense her psychically if I'm within a mile of her. And right now, I can't."

All colour drained from Rory's face. "Oh, no."

* * *

><p>Amy walked stiffly into the imposing marble building, flanked by two twelve-fingered men she guessed were guards of some kind. She'd managed to retrieve her sonic phone from under the kitchen table, rushed out of the TARDIS and found herself in the middle of an armed party (though they hadn't been aiming their guns at <em>her<em>). She'd resisted them briefly, but had relented upon being reminded that, first, they had guns and she didn't, and second, it'd really make their day if she could please, please, _please_ come quietly.

_If they were trying to kill me, they wouldn't have said "please" three times, _she'd reasoned._ Most nasty aliens don't bother with one, let alone two._

"This way, madam." The guard on her left raised his arm, pointing her up an ornate stone staircase.

"Thank you," she replied tersely. They were impeccably polite and surprisingly generous - every time she'd complained about sore feet, they'd stopped to rest until she felt better. They were also kinda cute, twelve fingers notwithstanding, but Amy kept in mind that they were still her captors.

They led her into a darkened room, large holographic projections on either side.

"General. Madam Secretary. She's here."

A gruff-looking man in full decorated military uniform, and a sharp-looking woman with light brown hair tied up in a neat bun turned and faced her.

"Ah. Welcome. I am Secretary Heviniye, Head of the Stroyet Grand Council." The woman spoke in clipped, high tones. "This is General Gordost, Chief of the Stroyet Defence Force."

The man nodded politely.

_Big on politeness, this lot, _Amy thought wryly. "Pleased to meet you," she said, extending a handshake to both. She decided that it'd be smartest not to tell them anything about herself unless she really had to for obvious reasons. The last thing she wanted was a case of mistaken identity.

"Same to you. You're not exactly what I was expecting, if I may say so," the woman remarked, returning the handshake.

Amy had no idea how to reply to that, so she chose to ignore it and completely change the subject. "The building to the right of the lobby is really cool, to be honest. The one that looks like a flower on top."

Heviniye smiled. "Ah, the United Stroyet Glass headquarters. Chief manufacturers of Stroyet Glass, our greatest export. You know, to make it, we take ordinary window glass, melt it at precisely one thousand degrees of temperature, add three perfectly ordinary apples and then freeze it at zero. Creates glass which is wonderfully easy to work with but incredibly hard to break."

Amy's eyes had completely glazed over. "I... see."

Heviniye blushed, noticing her expression. "Sorry. I forgot myself... stroyeteli are naturally proud architects, and we tend to detail the process behind our greatest achievements at the drop of a hat."

"Don't worry about it," Amy reassured her, suppressing a wry smirk at the thought that she knew someone else with a very similar problem.

"Thanks. Now, to business." Heviniye clapped her hands together and assumed a business-like posture. "They will be here in four days, and when they arrive, our sun – and by extension this world – will be destroyed. But not if you help us."

Amy's face whitened. "Sorry?"

"Was I not descriptive enough? Sorry. I'll try again. In four days, a fleet of ships commanded by Them will arrive in this solar system. Their purpose is to destroy our world by destroying our star. We have no more weapons, no more starships, and no means by which to produce either. We are doomed – but with you, we have hope."

Amy could barely speak. "M-me?"

"Yes, you." Heviniye replied, an ever so slight note of impatience entering her voice. "You're supposed to be the last of the Time Lords – Time Ladies, sorry – and the Oncoming Storm. The one who's protected countless worlds from destruction and saved the whole universe on multiple occasions. Come on, Doctor. We need one of your brilliant ideas."

The two heartbeats within Amy quickened to an almost dangerous pace, her eyes wide as dinner plates.

_Mistaken identity, indeed._

* * *

><p><strong>You'll notice that the names have a distinctly Russian bent to them (feel free, by the way, to point and laugh at my rather dodgy attempts at transliteration). This mostly came about because Heviniye was originally called "Strelya", and it struck me that this had a rather Russian feel to it, so I ran with that. You'll also note that I haven't capitalised "stroyeteli" - that too is deliberate. Fans of Mass Effect will know the justification, it's more or less grammatical and has to do with the correct use of proper nouns. However, anything that is capitalised in canon will remain capitalised to avoid confusion.<br>**


	7. General Pond

**This chapter ended up a lot longer and wider-ranging than I'd initially planned. I actually had a lot of trouble starting this one, but it just all kind of... rushed out once I got into it.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 7. General Pond: 11-12 October 2010<strong>

The infinite void of deep space was a perfect place for self-contemplation.

The robed man leaned on the railing, inspecting the vast jutting prow of gleaming steel before him, illuminated by rows of powerful lights along its length. Countless dagger-shaped starships, just like his own flagship, cut silently through the perfect blackness of space on either side, superimposed over the tiny beacons of light that dotted the everlasting night.

_Soon they will be one less in number._

Like the rest of the remnants of his race, he had no name. Personal pronouns and personal names had died long ago – no one even knew what his race was originally called. The only distinguishing features he had was his great height, pearly white hair and fierce blue eyes. A gold-leaf stripe on his robe marked him out as the leader of Them. They had one purpose, and one alone – to avenge the countless numbers of their ancestors who had been tricked, suffered and died at the hands of Stroyet.

And now, at last, Stroyet would pay.

_Soon._

* * *

><p>"Seriously, hear me out. This is all a big, big mistake," Amy pleaded.<p>

_How many of those have there been in the last few months?_

"Stop pulling our fingers. We scanned your DNA: a perfect match with Time Lord. We scanned your ship: Type 40 TARDIS in the shape of a 20th century Earth police box. You even have a sonic screwdriver... although the aesthetics could use some work. Maybe later."

"It's a sonic _phone!"_ Amy snapped back at Heviniye. She'd sat down on one of the very comfortable chairs in the Central Office, trying earnestly to explain that whilst she might _seem_ to be the Doctor, she really, really wasn't. Heviniye had been briskly back and forth in front of her, but paused at her tone of voice.

"Sorry." Even in this stressful juncture, Heviniye's natural politeness was irrepressible.

"Look, I know this looks weird. And I get why you'd think I'm the Doctor. But I _promise_ you, I'm not him. If we have time, I'll tell you the story, but it's complicated."

Heviniye gave the ginger an appraising look. "So have you even ever met him? How do I know you haven't killed him and stolen his TARDIS?"

A bolt of indignation shot through Amy at the suggestion. "Of course I haven't! I travel with him. He's my friend – my best friend."

"So where is he now, then?"

"No idea. I'd love to tell you, but we got separated. He's not within a mile of this place, I can tell you that."

Heviniye sighed. "All right. Fine."

Amy stood, relieved to be off the hook. "So, can I go? I mean, I'd love to explore this city. And find the Doctor and my fiancée."

To her surprise, Heviniye shook her head. "Oh no. If we had time, I'd let you go find him, but we don't – he could be anywhere in this city and it could take days. No, we have a planet to save."

Amy turned white as a sheet.

"But – but I'm not–" she stammered.

"You might not be the Doctor, but you're still a Time Lady, you've got access to a TARDIS and you've got a sonic screwdriver - sonic _phone_, sorry. You'll do."

* * *

><p>They'd been searching for hours, and already the sky was beginning to redden as the blue star edged towards the horizon.<p>

"Sunrise already? How long have we been looking for her?"

"About eight hours. A Stroyet day is half the length of an Earth day," the Doctor replied, as they dashed down yet another skyscraper-lined street.

They'd run straight back to the TARDIS, but she was nowhere to be found. The Doctor knew she wouldn't be there from her lack of psychic presence, but he'd had to be sure – more importantly, he wanted to check the scanner records. They'd showed her dashing out of the TARDIS with her sonic phone and straight into an armed group of stroyeteli. After a brief struggle, Amy seemed to depart with them quite willingly.

_At least they're not trying to hurt her_, he consoled himself, knowing that his red-headed companion's instincts were just as good as his own.

This, however, didn't comfort Rory.

"Great. So my fiancée has spent the night as the prisoner of a bunch of alien architects. Thanks."

"Rory, I _promise_ you I will do everything in my power to get her back. I swear I will protect her, whatever it takes."

Rory seemed mollified, but his expression remained dark.

"I wonder what's getting everyone down around here. Stroyeteli are supposed to be a happy bunch," he mused.

"Do you _really_ think that's important right now? _Really?_" Rory had no time to think about the odd behaviour of the planet's inhabitants – not whilst there was a possibility that Amy was in the slightest danger.

"These things are related, Rory. They always are. They knew we were coming somehow."

"And so...?"

"And so I don't think they're kidnapping Amy as a prisoner. No, more likely they've mistaken her for me and are trying to get my help with something. If I can just find out what they need my help with, then that might lead me to her."

"So why don't you just ask one of them?"

The Doctor stopped abruptly in his tracks, an expression on his face akin to that of someone who'd just been unexpectedly smacked in the face. He'd gotten so worked up in his own world, trying to both find his best friend and come up with theories explaining what the dilemma plaguing the locals was that that simple idea had completely escaped him.

"I could do that, couldn't I?"

Rory simply rolled his eyes.

* * *

><p>Amy had expected many things when she'd joined the Doctor to see all of time and space. She'd expected even more when she learned what her attempted resuscitation had turned her into.<p>

Planning a war, however, was most definitely not on the list.

"So let me get this straight. In two – I mean, four – days, there's going to be a whole bunch of spaceships coming here to blow up your star? How are they supposed to do that?"

"Our military simulations predict They will use highly concentrated atomic iron lasers to destabilise the core of the star, causing it to supernova. This entire system will be annihilated." General Gordost spoke in matter-of-fact tones, as was befitting of his military status.

Amy blinked. She'd been decent at school, but that was years ago now, and astrophysics was _way_ beyond anything she'd ever learnt there. She'd hoped her new-found technical wizardry would help, but clearly that only extended to Gallifreyean technology.

"Er – right. Out of curiosity, what are these baddies called?" Despite having kidnapped her, she couldn't help but like the twelve-fingered inhabitants of Stroyet. It probably helped that they'd fed her two helpings of the most delicious steak and kidney pie she'd ever tasted. Plus there was the fact she felt just a little sorry for them, what with having a day and a half before their planet and its ten billion inhabitants ceased to exist. Even though she felt wholly inadequate for the task at hand, she'd quickly resolved to do everything in her power to help.

_What good is it being a Time Lady if I can't?_

"Them," Gordost answered her.

"Not very descriptive, is it?"

Even General Gordost, with his strict military discipline, had to smile. "Their true name was lost years ago, General Pond. So we just refer to Them now."

A laugh bubbled up from within Amy, falling from her lips as she took in the odd moniker. "General Pond. Now there's a new one." Her expression returned to its previous seriousness. "So They will be using their... laser thingies to blow up your star in four days. Okay..." She leaned forward, the wheels of her modified brain clicking into gear.

* * *

><p>The first couple of people the Doctor had asked had just looked at him as if he was mad. He didn't even get that far with a few – they'd taken one glance at his outfit (specifically, the bow-tie), gave him a disbelieving glare and stalked off in the opposite direction. Unperturbed, and very much used to it, he continued to approach anyone who he felt might be able to divulge what precisely was casting such a uniform shadow over the mood of the world's inhabitants.<p>

"Hello! Sorry to interrupt," the Doctor said, barging in on one shopkeeper who was in the middle of unpacking a various array of futuristic looking gadgets. He whipped out his psychic paper and held it less than a foot from his face. "I'm the Doctor, and this is Rory. We're from the, uh..."

"Universal Travelling Emotional Support Group? What on Stroyet is that?" The shopkeeper asked, staring at the paper with an eyebrow raised.

"Does it really say that?" The Doctor turned to look at the psychic paper, eyes wide with surprise. He quickly reverted back to his normal bright expression and pocketed the paper. "Er, yes, well, that's us. We, uh, travel the universe, supporting people. Emotionally."

"I see. I suppose that means you're not from this planet then. Welcome to Stroyet, in that case. Sorry you couldn't have seen it in happier times. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get ready for opening," the shopkeeper told him, returning to his packing.

"I was just going to ask about that, actually. I've been here before, and I'm not used to seeing everyone so glum."

The shopkeeper looked up, surprised. "You mean you don't know?"

A pause.

"Ah, sorry. Another planet. My mistake."

"Don't worry about it. Do you mind if we have a little chat?"

The shopkeeper sighed, standing up from his packing. "I suppose not. It's not like unpacking is particularly useful when the world is going to end in a few days anyway."

"Sorry, what? The end of the world?" Rory spoke up at last, his voice laced with surprise.

The shopkeeper placed his hand on his forehead. "My deepest apologies. I keep forgetting that you're from elsewhere and don't know about Them. It can be difficult not to assume that people know when it's been part of your life for so many years. Come out the back, I'll fetch you a steak and kidney pie and tell you everything."

"Much appreciated," the Doctor replied sincerely, his eyes sparkling with anticipation at being about to taste the famed pastry. "What's your name, by the way?"

"Nadezhda." The two shook hands, his six-fingered hand wrapping itself around the Time Lord's.

* * *

><p>"Are you <em>absolutely<em> sure this will work?"

"Got any better ideas?"

"Not really," Heviniye admitted, "but charging into a fully armed fleet of war with fifty armed troops doesn't strike me as a plan that fills me with optimism. Some of the finest in the universe, to be sure, but fifty nonetheless."

"Trust me, it's a damn sight better than some of the plans I've seen the Doctor come up with, and they work out all right." Forefront in Amy's memory was that terrifying ordeal on the Byzantium where she'd been forced to walk blind through a forest of Weeping Angels. But he'd come through for her. He always did. "Besides which, we're not _charging_ at them. We're _sneaking._ With a little help, and those plans you dug up, we should get in somewhere in a storage compartment on the flagship.

_I hope_, she didn't add.

"And then?"

General Gordost answered for her. "We expect that whilst the fleet will contain vast numbers of ships, they will almost all be automated, controlled from a central command centre on the flagship. They simply do not have the personnel to man each ship properly - like us, their strength is in technical expertise, not manpower. We simply need to take command of the flagship to save our people."

"How many of Them will be on the flagship?"

"In all likelihood, close to a thousand. So twenty of Them for every stroyeteli. Oh, and Time Lady."

Heviniye sighed. "You know, maybe we really should go find the Doctor..."

Amy glanced at the display of her sonic phone. Seven in the morning on the 12th of October. "Trust me, I wish I could, and I know he and Rory are gonna kill me for this, but there's no time. Not if we want to save your people." There was a good reason for the rush - there was less than thirty-six hours until Their estimated time of arrival.

Heviniye nodded. "All right. Are we all ready?"

"Secretary Heviniye," Gordost suddenly spoke up. "You should stay. This is a military operation, you're not a military person."

"Hey, neither am I, despite my title," Amy pointed out.

"You're our way in," Gordost replied simply.

"General, this is our one and only chance to save our people, our planet," Heviniye said firmly. "It's my _job_ to be here."

"No, Secretary. Your place is here. Someone will have to guide our people when-" he didn't say _if_, but it hung unspoken in the air nonetheless "-we succeed. I don't need to add that we might not return."

Slowly, Heviniye nodded, swallowing her pride, knowing that he was right. "All right. Just remember, all of Stroyet is with you." She extended to her fullest height and whipped a full military salute, which was returned by equal vigour by the assembled men around her.

"As always, Secretary."

Heviniye nodded and left. Amy rubbed her hands together once she was gone, shaking slightly from nerves and no small measure of fear, yet filled with excitement.

"Alright! We all ready? Good to go?"

"Whenever you are, General Pond."

She'd always laugh whenever she heard that. "Right then! Let's do this thing!"

* * *

><p>They'd been talking with Nadezhda for a few hours, and the Doctor was just beginning to come up with the vague outlines of a plan to stop Them when he suddenly stood up, knocking his chair to the ground.<p>

"Doctor, what is it?" Rory asked, taken aback by his sudden change in mood.

"Stay here. Stay _right_ here."

"Doctor, what is it? Doctor? Doctor!"

But he had already raced out of the back garden, through the shop and out onto the street beyond. Rory shook his head.

"That man, seriously. God knows what goes on inside his head. Well, except maybe my fiancée..."

Nadezhda smiled warmly. "I can see you love your fiancée dearly. When are you two going to marry?"

Rory frowned slightly. "Well, we _were_ going to get married tomorrow, as of-" he did a quick count in his head "-three and a half months ago." Nadezhda leaned back in surprise, his eyebrows raised.

"So why haven't you?"

"It's complicated," Rory said, using Amy's favoured phrase for the whole situation.

"It surely must be extraordinarily complicated for it to have gotten in the way like that."

"Trust me, it is."

He paused for a moment. "Do you not love her any more?"

Indignation and annoyance rippled through Rory. "No, no! Absolutely I still love her. It's just that..." He swallowed and paused before continuing. "It's just that sometimes I wonder if I'm doing the right thing by her by marrying her. I mean, she's not like me any more. If everything goes well, she's going to live for hundreds and thousands of years and I won't, obviously. I don't want to burden her by forcing her to have a husband who's going to wither and grow old and die while she doesn't."

Nadezhda was silent for a moment. "I can see why that would be a problem," he began slowly, "but if the bond between you two is as strong – from your side, anyway – as I think it is, I'm sure you'd be able to work around that." He paused for a moment, contemplating. "You fear she wants the other one. The Doctor."

Rory opened his mouth, then closed it. The kindly old shopkeeper had managed to stumble across his deepest misgivings, doubts that had lain at his core ever since he was just nine years old. A hot surge of irrational jealousy and mistrust raced through him.

_He's the Doctor, and you're Rory_, the voice said from deep within. _He's mad, funny, has a time machine and can show her all of time and space. _He was just a nurse in an English village, one he was well aware that she quite openly despised. That wasn't even mentioning the fact that to her, he was the alien now. _How can you possibly compete?_

He couldn't answer that. He couldn't possibly answer that. Ever since he was nine he known he couldn't compete, that he was merely secondary to the man she'd been waiting for ever since that warm summer evening when she was seven.

_Give up, Rory,_ the voice hissed maliciously. _If you love her, truly love her, you know that he can offer her so, so much more. Will offer so much more. Is offering so much more. Why do you think she ran away on the night before her wedding?_

He was sinking deep into a pool of despair when a thought suddenly occurred to him. A response. _Well, if that's so, then why did she make him promise to take her back? Why did she ask me to stay when I was going to leave?_ Before the voice could come up with an answer, however, a hurried stomping of feet announced the Doctor's return.

"Doctor? What was that? Where did you go?"

"The TARDIS," he replied, breathless, his face bereft of all colour. "It's gone."

* * *

><p><strong>An atom laser, by the way, is a real device, working pretty much as the name suggests. A laser-like beam of atoms.<br>**

**Reviews, advice, all that good stuff appreciated.  
><strong>


	8. Worst Soldier Ever

**Reviews appreciated, still looking for editors. The usuals.**

**A reminder that Stroyet days are roughly twelve hours long, not twenty-four.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 8. Worst Soldier Ever – 12 October 2010<strong>

The TARDIS doors opened and a river of flaming hair appeared in the doorway.

"Wow! We actually ended up where I wanted. That's a first for me," Amy remarked, stepping into the dimly lit cavernous room, which was filled with dark grey boxes stacked at least fifty feet high.

"A first?" It was the stroyeteli Captain, whom Amy had taken a shine to, following behind her.

"Yeah. Last week I tried flying us to Hawaii, only to end up right on top of a volcano which was busy spewing out lava. The Doctor gave me an earful," she said, grinning. "I guess Mrs Doctor helped me out a bit this time." She patted the blue box fondly.

"Mrs Doctor?"

"Oh, yeah, that's my nickname for the TARDIS. Mostly to tease the Doctor. Seriously, the way he talks to it when he thinks he's alone..."

"I'm not sure I want to know."

"Good plan," she agreed with a laugh.

General Gordost, having finished his appraisal of their immediate surroundings, decided that this was enough levity for now – they were on a mission to save their world, after all.

"General. Captain. If you please." Amy and the Captain moved away from their own little musings and joined the rest of the soldiers. "Alright. Now, according to General Pond-" Amy still couldn't help but smirk at that "-and her sonic phone, we have just over thirty three Earth hours remaining before this fleet is in range of Zvezda. We'll need to confirm that by star triangulation when we can, but that the TARDIS landed us precisely where our computer predictions said the flagship storeroom would be at this time is a good sign. So for now, assume we have just under three days remaining."

Gordost paused, allowing that critical piece of information to sink in. "Now, there's far too many of Them for us to even think about fighting them, so our safety will be in smaller groups. I will lead one, the Captain will lead another, and General Pond – General!"

Amy snapped back to attention, having been distracted by her futurstic, oversized pistol (as it'd been designed for a six fingered-hand). She really was the worst soldier ever. "Yes! Sorry."

General Gordost shook his head, his lip curling slightly. She didn't need her telepathic abilities to know his thoughts mirrored her own.

"As I was saying, I will lead one group, the Captain will lead the second and General Pond will lead the third. General Pond's group will head to Navigation to try and sabotage the fleet's engines, buy us time and with luck, leave it stranded in deep space. The Captain will head to Weapons Control and try to disable the atom-laser batteries. My group will head to Central Command to try and neutralise the fleet from there. Any questions?"

"Er, yeah. I have one," she answered.

General Gordost turned to face her. "Yes?"

"Are we gonna be able to stay in touch with each other? I mean, splitting up is all well and good but..."

"Ah. Thank you for reminding me." He took out three small black earpieces from his pocket, clipping one on his own ear and handing the other two to Amy and the Captain, who did the same. "Quantum communicators. Encrypted, so we should be completely immune to eavesdropping. It'll also allow us to track each other's progress."

Amy didn't quite understand what he was talking about, but she decided to take his word for it. She made a mental note to check a physics textbook if – _when – _they finished their mission.

"Anything else? No?" Gordost looked around the group, seeking a response. He didn't get one. "Alright, people. We've got ten billion people to save."

* * *

><p>"You know, I've travelled with a lot of people in nine centuries, but I can't remember the last time one of my companions tried to <em>steal <em>my TARDIS_._" The Doctor was pacing the garden, restless, frustrated by the recklessness of his best friend.

"How do you know she stole it? Someone else could have piloted it. Or forced her to do it for them."

"My people would never do that," Nadezhda pointed out defensively.

"I'm sorry, but your people kind of _kidnapped_ her. I'm not really about to give the benefit of the doubt here."

The Doctor shook his head. "No, Rory, she definitely took it and she was definitely doing it of her own will. I installed emergency programs that would activate if anyone other than me or my friends was trying to pilot the TARDIS, or if they were being forced to do so. If she didn't take it, or she was being made to, I'd know. I suspect the TARDIS helped her out as well... I'll be having words later." He stopped pacing and stood perfectly still, his eyes burning with annoyance and concern. "I have to talk to the rulers of this place."

Nadezhda frowned. "I'm sure they'll be sympathetic to your concerns, but with doom impending I think they'll have bigger problems than there whereabouts of the friend of an alien visitor."

"Ah, but I'm not just any alien. I'm the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords and the Oncoming Storm. I can help you save your planet, but not without my TARDIS and not without Amy."

Nadezhda considered the Doctor carefully. By every Stroyet standard imaginable, the Doctor was completely mad, right from the way he talked to the way he dressed – _especially_ the way he dressed. However, from the moment he walked in his shop, he just had this _feeling_ that this was a good man who he could trust with his life – and his planet. He nodded.

"All right."

An hour later they pulled up in front of the same marble building Amy had been whisked off to the previous day. "This is it," Nadezhda told them, waiting for them to exit his transport.

"Wait, you're not coming?" the Doctor inquired.

Nadezhda smiled. "Doctor, I am but a simple shopkeeper. You're trying to save our planet. Let's just say it's above my salary." The Doctor smiled and patted his back encouragingly.

"You'd be amazed at what a shopkeeper can do. You know, my friend used to be paid to kiss people at parties for fun." The Doctor wrinkled his nose slightly. _Kissogram... I mean, really. She has the brains for, well, a brain surgeon._ "And now she's one of the most powerful beings in the universe."

Nadezhda sighed.

"You really think I won't just be a giant paperweight?"

"Course not. Although paperweights can be very useful in the right circumstances. Anyway, you'll be fine. Trust me. I'm the Doctor."

"Very well."

* * *

><p>Heviniye strode her office, constantly throwing nervous glances at the clock. <em>Less than three days... <em>with every second, her sense of fear grew – not for her own life, but her fear that she might let down her people in the worst imaginable manner. However, she now at least had hope – even if that hope rested with a mad woman with a box.

At that moment, two aliens, one of them was wearing one of the most striking assortments of clothing ever seen on Stroyet, burst into the office, followed by a man she recognised as one of the local electronics merchants.

"Er, greetings. Forgive my bluntness, but who on Stroyet are you?"

The odder - what _was_ that on his neck? - of the two aliens clapped his hands and smiled. "Greetings to you too. I'm the Doctor, this is Rory-" the other alien raised his hand in what she assumed was some sort of greeting "-and Nadezhda."

He spoke in rapid-fire tones and it took a moment for what he'd said to register. She blanched.

"You're – you're the Doctor?"

"That's me. I gather you've been looking for me."

"We were, but it's a bit late now. Welcome to Stroyet in any case, Doctor. Is there something you need?"

"Yes, small thing. I came here with a friend, a girl, short skirt, long legs, bright red hair, quite good looking actually. Have you seen her? Her name's-"

"Amy Pond?" If it were possible, Heviniye's face became even whiter.

"You've seen her?" The other alien, the one called Rory, spoke for the first time. "Where is she? Tell me!"

_Uh oh._ "I promise you I can explain. Sit down and I'll tell you what happened."

"Er – if it's not rude, could you bring out a pie whilst we're talking?" the Doctor inquired hopefully.

She was slightly taken aback by the seemingly out-of-place request, but took it in her stride. "Of course."

"Excellent."

* * *

><p>They moved silently through the corridors, jumping between shadows when the guards went off-duty. They moved slowly – they guessed it was only about a kilometre's worth of corridor to the Navigation section, but they had to be absolutely certain they wouldn't be detected before moving. As a result, they'd only covered about a hundred metres in several hours. Amy was at the front of the group, trying to justify her rank, but in reality she deferred to her infinitely more experienced comrades on basically every occasion, although she tried to pass them off as her ideas. The stroyeteli, being gracious folk, allowed her that luxury.<p>

She wasn't completely useless, however – although her carelessness had almost gotten them caught on two occasions. She'd stopped them moving straight in front of a patrolling guard, her telepathically enhanced intuition warning her of the imminent danger. She'd also managed to surreptitiously distract guards on several occasions by making a light, console or other object explode with her sonic phone.

They moved through a door into an empty darkened hallway at the side of the ship. The side wall was entirely glass and Amy moved towards in, taking in the majestic sight of deep space. She'd seen sights like this enough, but it would never, ever get old for her – not if she lived to be a thousand which, of course, was very much a possibility_._ She heard a scribbling noise, and turned to see one of the soldiers with pen in hand, writing arrays of numbers on the paper and drawing invisible lines in front of him with his finger.

"What are you doing?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"General Gordost did order us to confirm our position and time by star triangulation at first opportunity," he stated, not taking his eyes off the paper.

"Not got any faith in my flying, do ya?"

The soldier smiled at that, but continued with his calculations. Amy returned her gaze to the vast expanse in front of her. _So beautiful, _she thought. _Just like him._

_Wait,_ a voice replied from inside her. _Who's "him"? Rory or the Doctor?_ She paused. _Rory. I mean, Rory. Definitely Rory. Yeah. Rory_, she answered, ignoring the decided lack of conviction in her response.

Fortunately for her, the impeding awkward internal debate was stifled when the soldier, having finished his calculations, suddenly spoke, a sharp edge to his voice.

"General Pond? You might want to see this."

She turned to face him, and was bending down to his level, when-

"Hey! Who the hell are you?"

* * *

><p>"So she took a bunch of soldiers, flew the TARDIS and landed it right in the middle of the flagship with a view to taking it over?"<p>

"In essence, yes. I assume you would have come up with a better plan?"

"Of course!" the Doctor responded, far too quickly. Heviniye raised her eyebrows. "Well, OK, perhaps." Still the eyebrows were raised. "Fine then, probably not."

"What would you have done?"

"Taken a bunch of soldiers, flown the TARDIS, landed it right in the middle of the flagship with a view to taking it over. Maybe would have forgone the 'taken a bunch of soldiers' bit." He leaned back on his chair, hand resting on his forehead. "The difference, of course, is that it would have been me doing it, not Amy."

"What's the difference? You would have brought her along anyway and she'd be in just as much danger," Rory pointed out, slightly resentfully.

The words stung the Doctor, but he hid the emotion. "Yes, but in this case she did it on her own. I don't think she has any idea what she's getting into."

"Somehow, Doctor, I don't think it would have made any difference either way," Heviniye replied, her lip curling as she remembered just how stubborn the redhead had been during the planning sessions.

"You're probably right about that. Right now we need to contact her." He leaned forward, deep in thought.

"Er – I do remind you that she's on a spaceship that is still a considerable distance from this solar system," Heviniye pointed out. "Any message we send would take many hours to reach her, and hours more still to receive a reply. We don't have such time."

"Faster-than-light communication is a wonderful thing, you know."

Heviniye sighed. "It would be, but we haven't developed that technology yet. There are no faster-than-light communicators to be found here."

"Not a problem. Give me a day or two and I can whip one up. All I need is... wait." A memory suddenly struck him, an image of silver objects being unpacked in a store. "Say, Nadezhda." He turned to the shopkeeper who was sitting in the corner quietly, feeling very much like a giant paperweight. "What exactly do you sell?"

"Oh, consumer electronics. Basic communicators, audio players, that sort of thing."

The Doctor's smile stretched from ear to ear. "Bingo."

* * *

><p>If it weren't for Amy's Time Lady reflexes, they surely would all have been killed before they'd even managed to turn around. Somehow, however, she'd managed to instinctively spin around, sonic phone in hand, disabling the guns of the guards who had just entered the room and were mere milliseconds away from pulling the triggers. Before they could even register that their guns had completely failed, the guards dropped to the floor, smoking holes in their jackets.<p>

Amy lowered her phone, breathing heavily. _Wow. That was intense._ Her gaze caught the face of one of the dead guards, tongue lolling out and the lifeless eyes still half open. She quickly forced her attention elsewhere. _You just helped kill people, Amelia Pond._

She shook her head. Now was not the time for guilt. "So, you needed to see me?"

The soldier looked up at her, a newfound respect in his eyes. "Yes, General Pond. I completed the-"

"Listen, the whole 'General Pond' thing is great for a laugh and all, but let's drop it, OK? You're the soldier, I'm just a girl tagging along for the ride. Amy, please."

He smiled. "All right, Amy. I completed the triangulations, and the results aren't exactly what I was expecting." He pushed the notepad into her hands. She looked down the lists of numbers, comprehending precisely nothing.

"Er – what is this all meant to mean?"

He took the notepad back, flipped over a new page and drew a line and several dark circles on it. "This is Stroyet, here." He placed his finger on a dark circle he'd drawn at one end of the line. "And if we were where we thought we were, we'd be here," he continued, pointing at the circle on the opposite end.

"And right now?"

"We're not there. Instead we're here," he said, circling a point in the middle of a line.

"So we're about half as close as we thought we were. Well, we still ended up in the right place. I don't really see the – oh." Her voice fell almost to a whisper on the last word, her cheeks visibly paling even in the darkness of the hallway.

"Yeah."

"So instead of two and a bit days, we have-"

"Just over one. Correct."

"I guess my flying skills aren't so crash-hot after all," she joked, trying to make light of the suddenly much more dire situation. She moved her hand towards the side of her head, getting ready to deliver some _very_ bad news to the other two groups, when a very familiar screeching noise pierced the air and a vibration ran down the hand still holding the sonic phone.

She froze in astonishment. _Surely that isn't-_

"What the _hell_ is that noise?"

"My phone," she whispered, hardly daring to believe it. "Someone's calling me." With a trembling thumb she pushed the green button on the keypad and raised it to the ear not occupied by the communicator.

A very familiar came through the speaker, laced with mingled irritation and relief.

"_**So, Pond. Care to explain what made you steal my TARDIS?**_"

She gulped. _Uh oh._


	9. A Very Unexpected Phone Call

**A bit of an in-between chapter, this one. Hopefully it's to everyone's standards. Reviews appreciated etc. etc. Hopefully the amount of bold at the top isn't too much.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 9. A Very Unexpected Phone Call - 12 October 2010<strong>

"I can explain," Amy protested immediately, her voice trembling as she spoke. _Uh oh uh oh._

"_**Gallifreyean, Amy," **_the Doctor answered._** "Can't be sure no one's listening in on**_** this."**

"_**Got it," **_she replied, effortlessly switching to the innate Time Lord tongue._** "As I was saying, I can**_** explain."**

"_**I look forward to the explanation. Right now though, there are more important things at hand." **_

Amy breathed a sigh of relief at being let off the hook – for now.

"_**Yeah, like the fact that I thought I had twenty-something hours to save ten billion people and it turns out that instead I have about thirteen."**_

"_**Like that. If your plan is to split up into several groups and try to disable the ship at different points, I don't think you have time for that now."**_

"_**How did you know that? You looking into my head?"**_ Amy queried suspiciously. She got a chuckle in response.

"_**You're billions of miles away, Amy. Besides which, I'm the Doctor. It wasn't hard to work out what you'd try to do, given the number of people you brought along."**_

"_**Oooh, and aren't we all Mr Smarty-Pants today."**_

"_**Today and every day."**_

"_**So what's the plan, then? I'd rather not see ten billion people die. I like these people, you know."**_

"_**Agreed. Your best bet will be to come back and pick Rory and I up. He's not particularly pleased at you either, by the way."**_ Amy swallowed_. _That was one conversation she would really rather avoid._  
><em>

"_**I'm not sure this lot will take too kindly to me running away."**_

"_**We'll come back. We always come back." **_Amy was mildly surprised – but quite pleased – at the use of 'we'. _Maybe I'm cut out for this after all._

She paused for a moment, thinking. _**"It'll take me a while to get back to the TARDIS."**_

"_**How long?"**_

She paused again, considering the distances, hiding spots and guard patterns that she'd seen along the way. _**"Two hours, maybe three. So that'll leave about ten or eleven hours before big blue star up yonder goes pop."**_

"_**That'll be enough."**_

"_**If you say so."**_

"_**You trust me, right?"**_

"_**Absolutely." **_There was no denying the conviction of her reply. _**"Wait,"**_ she said slowly, having just been struck by a rather obvious issue. _**"I don't know where you are. How am I meant to find you?"**_

"_**Purple striped switch on the third console panel, above the Orthogonality Distributor. Hard to miss. What was the label?"**_

He screwed up her face, concentrating. _**"Uhh... a bunch of letters, I think. LTD?"**_

"_**And what do you think LTD stands for?"**_

It took a second, and then it hit her. Her voice was barely audible when she answered. _**"Locate the Doctor?"**_

"_**Correct." **_The amusement and smugness coming through the speaker was almost unbearable. _**"One to keep it mind for the future, I suggest."**_

"_**Yes, sir."**_

"_**Oh goodness, please don't call me that. Last time people started referring to me as 'Sir' they tried to kill me not long afterwards. I didn't even know what I'd done wrong at that point." **_

Amy giggled.

"_**Alright. So, back to the TARDIS for a lift, then?"**_

"_**Yep. See you soon."**_

"_**And the same to you."**_

* * *

><p>"Sir, you might want to hear this."<p>

The leader of Them turned around to the radio operator, his pitiless eyes contemplating the young man. _He better have a good reason to be disturbing me_. _Especially now that we are so close._

"Yes?"

"We picked up a stray communication to somewhere on this ship. Not on authorized frequencies."

The leader breathed deep. "So the stroyeteli are aboard?". The operator shook his head.

"No, sir. It was an FTL signal."

"Someone might have given them an FTL communicator," the leader pointed out.

"More than that sir. It was completely insecure, which is strange in itself, but then we tried listening to it. We only caught the last part." He held an earpiece for the leader to accept, which he took stiffly. He placed one in his ear and listened. The radio operator activated the recording.

Two voices, clear as day, came through the earpiece. One spoke with a deeper, throatier tone that was clearly masculine, whilst the other spoke in the high, flighty voice of a female. The leader wasn't thinking about that, however, because he was totally transfixed by the language that they were speaking in – which was most definitely _not_ that of the stroyeteli. Even to a highly learned member of Them like himself, it was utterly, utterly alien. Flowing, graceful and ornate but so completely unlike any tongue he had ever heard that he didn't even know where to begin when trying to place it.

"What is _that?"_

The operator simply shook his head. "We've tried running every single translation algorithm we have, even some of the experimental ones, including the failures. None of them even came up with a potential suggestion, they just turned up blank. It's a strange coincidence, given all the odd things that have been happening around the ship in the last few hours." There had been multiple reports of computers going on the blink, lights failing for no apparent reason and even some minor explosions from electrical devices. The leader considered the news carefully, remaining silent for over a minute.

"Probably a stray signal floating through space for millions of years, or interference of some kind. But tell the Guard Chief to be extra careful around the critical areas of the ship." The operator bowed deeply and left to do his duty. The leader returned to his inspection of the majesty of deep space before him, his mind troubled.

_A language so dead, so lost that no tongue currently living even remotely resembles it, being heard again..._

* * *

><p>As she'd predicted, none of Amy's comrades nor those on the communicator were best pleased with her proposed change in plan, nor the drastic change in circumstances.<p>

"So having piloted us to a point where it will probably be too late to reach our destinations, you're going to leave us?" The General's voice seethed with quiet rage through the black earpiece.

"I _will_ come back. I promise. But if you want to have any hope at all of saving your people, you _have_ to let me do this."

"I don't see how two people will make that much difference."

"One of them is my fiancée-"

"I don't see how that will help," General Gordost interjected roughly, forgetting his natural politeness.

Amy paused before continuing. "The other is the Doctor."

A silence met her words, several seconds in length. "So you found him?" Gordost asked eventually in a quiet, far more level tone.

"He told me where he was. Well, not really, but he told me how to find him."

A sigh. "This is a lot of effort for two men."

"The Doctor is good as an army. Better, even. Trust me on this – he's a thousand times the Time Lord I am."

Silence. _Please, please let me do this,_ she implored silently. After an age, the earpiece crackled into life again.

"Alright. But you're on your own."

"Fine by me."

* * *

><p>"So she's safe?"<p>

"Yes, yes, in a manner of speaking."

"In a manner of speaking?"

"On a ship filled with a quite a lot of very not nice people, Rory."

Rory sighed. "Why does this _always_ seem to happen around you?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Dunno. Must be some kind of universal bad luck charm. Or maybe I'm just attracted to trouble."

Rory shook his head. _I swear, Amy, I'm gonna kill you for this. _After he made sure she was alright, of course.

They had returned to Nadezhda's shop yesterday along with Heviniye. The Doctor had immediately set to work creating a faster-than-light communicator. It took over one and a half Stroyet days, several aborted attempts, a spare dishwasher and all of Nadezhda's forks, but he had eventually managed to construct the communicator (which was almost his height) and give Amy a very unexpected phone call.

"So what now?" Heviniye asked.

"She's going to fly the TARDIS back here and pick us up."

"And then?"

"And then go back to the ship and sort this mess out."

"How long will that be?"

"Amy said two to three hours. Not much to do other than to wait." So they did, sitting tensely in the back garden, all too aware that every second that passed was a second closer to the end of the world.

Rory, however, wasn't thinking about this – there was something else very much on his mind. "Doctor," he spoke suddenly just after two hours had passed. "Can we talk?"

* * *

><p>Surprisingly, Amy moved quite swiftly through the corridors. Unencumbered by the other soldiers, she darted efficiently between the shadows, relying on her telepathy and her sonic phone to evade and distract.<p>

_This is actually pretty easy,_ she thought, as she disabled another guard by remotely unscrewing a hanging lamp from the ceiling, causing it to fall on top of him. She darted swiftly around the corner and found herself back in the hallway which she recognised as being the same one that she had left at. _Haha! Success!_

Unfortunately, however, she had been forced to take a slightly different route from the one she had left it by, and the complete uniformity of the grey, steel doors on either side of the corridor made it near-impossible to tell which one was the correct one.

_Ugh. Nothing for it but to try the doors, I guess. _She moved to the first door, pressed her head against the door, trying to sense the presence of any people inside. When she found none, she pressed her sonic to the latch and activated it, gently opening the door. She peeked inside to find an empty store room, not too dissimilar to the one where the TARDIS was parked. _Not the same, though. So let's try the next one_, she thought, relocking the door.

She performed the procedure on the next steel door, finding a completely empty room – not even a chair was present, just walls and a floor. It was darkened, so Amy could quite tell the colour of the walls, but it wasn't important – this clearly wasn't it. The next door was another storeroom, similar but not identical to the first. Fourth was another empty darkened room.

_Hmm... starting to notice a pattern now. Maybe I'll try one more, but otherwise I'll just skip every second door_, she thought after checking another storeroom. She pressed her head to the next door, searching and failing to find the presence of anyone inside. She buzzed her sonic phone and the door slowly opened. She poked her head inside, and saw that it was another empty room – but this one was lit. The floor, walls and ceiling had all been painted the same colour – white. The purest, cleanest white.

Without warning, a wave of indescribable terror washed over her. Sheer unadulterated fear swelled within, filled every ounce of her being. Her face almost as white as the room within, her eyes as wide as they could possibly be, her twin heartbeats racing. She slammed the door shut and pressed her back against it, breathing in short, sharp gasps.

_It's just a room, Amelia. Just... a room. It's not... not it. Don't think about it. Forget it._

She shook her head, taking in several deeper breaths to try and calm herself, resuming her task. She was now very careful to skip every second door.

* * *

><p>The Doctor felt it too. It wasn't nearly as intense for him as it had been for the Time Lady, having a certain distant and muffled feel to it. It startled him, however, causing him to stiffen suddenly as he walked through the door back into the shop.<p>

"Doctor?" Rory couldn't fail to notice his sudden change in demeanour. "What is it?"

The feeling having passed, the Doctor relaxed again, straightening his bow-tie as he entered. "Nothing. Just had a back spasm, that's all," he lied, still deeply unnerved. _What in the name of all that is good... what was that? Was that... Amy? What on Gallifrey made her feel __that__?_

Rory raised his eyebrows. "A back spasm. Right. I am a nurse, remember." The Doctor smiled and clapped the young man on the back.

"Gallifreyean back spasm. Special kind, very unpredictable and somewhat annoying. Now, you wanted to talk to me?" he asked, as the pair sat down.

"You said there was nothing going on between you and Amy. Had never been," Rory began bluntly.

"I did."

"Are you _absolutely_ sure about that? You're not lying to me about it?"

He hesitated slightly. "Yes."

"Because last week when Amy and I were asleep, I had this dream of you and her."

The Doctor raised his eyebrows slightly. "And so?"

"Amy doesn't dream, Doctor. Not like you and me. Not any more, no hopes and fantasies there. All she has is memories and the odd nightmare."

"And you know this... how?" the Doctor asked. "Oh... hang on. Ah. Touch telepathy. She's inadvertently giving you her dreams."

"And every single one of them is of something I know happened in her past. Some of them perfect to the last detail. Never anything weird or surreal – at least, not anything that we haven't done since I came aboard the TARDIS or she hasn't told me about. Except this – she hasn't told me about this."

A flicker of a suspicion lit itself in the Doctor's mind. "Was it in her bedroom?"

Rory's eyes widened slightly. "Yes."

"Was the TARDIS there?"

Wider still. "Yes."

"And had she just told me that she was going to marry you?"

Rory's eyes ceased widening, and instead narrowed to near-slits. He crossed his arms. "You know."

The Doctor sighed and rested his forehead on his palms. "Rory, I am so, so sorry. But believe me, it was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake. She knew it was a mistake. But she was scared that day. So, so scared. And all because I made a terrible mistake, I put her in more danger than you could possibly imagine."

He remembered how he'd felt upon realising that not only had he abandoned her next to a crack in time that could possibly have erased her from existence, but to escape she would be forced to walk blind through an army of the most malevolent creatures in creation - the shame still cut deep.

"And so in her relief, she... well, you saw. She apologised to me straight away and we haven't spoken about it since."

"I figured that, Doctor. But that's not my problem. The problem is that you lied to me – _she _lied to me. Why? And why didn't you come to tell me straight away?"

His head remained in his hands, and his voice was a flat, bitter monotone. "Because I was vain and selfish, and I was enjoying travelling with her too much to risk losing that. I put my own happiness above her welfare. Above yours."

Rory considered him for a long moment. "Alright," he finally said, slowly. "But hear this, Doctor. You can't just keep lying to me – and especially not her, now that she's like you – all the time. Because people will get hurt – people _have_ gotten hurt."

The Doctor nodded, taking the words on board. Whilst fully aware that Rory was right, that wasn't what was occupying right now. Rather, something else Rory had said was forcing his brain into gear.

_Amy doesn't dream, Doctor._

Why couldn't she dream? What had made her so empty, so bereft? That wasn't the Amy he knew – funny, flirty, frustrating, relentlessly optimistic. _What did I do to her when I left her for all those years?_

Where were her plans for the future? Where were the dreams of the family life with Rory? Of travelling through time and space with a young red-headed child? What of the life she _wanted_ to lead? _Does she even know?_

And then there was that _feeling_, that flash of unbridled terror he'd felt emanating from billions of miles away. How was that even possible? What had frightened her so much that it would produce that sort of feeling, so intense that it could be felt across the stars?

_What's going on inside your head, Amelia Pond?_

His contemplations were cut short, however, when a familiar whirring sound filled the air and a blue police box materialised in front of him. The TARDIS doors opened and a streak of flame poked itself out of the doorway. Amy's eyes were bright, her face lit with excitement, holding nothing of the abject terror she'd felt less than ten minutes beforehand.

"All aboard!"


	10. Reverse Engineering

**A note/hint - the subplots/character POV are not necessarily in sync.**

**Reviews are awesome, you know.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 10. Reverse Engineering: 12-13 October 2010<strong>

Now back in the hands of its original owner and someone who – relatively speaking – actually knew what they were doing, the TARDIS rematerialised in the storeroom that Amy had parked it in several hours beforehand. It reappeared between precisely the same shelves of boxes, less than five seconds after it had left. The Doctor skipped out of the time machine, followed by Amy, Rory, Heviniye and a very nervous Nadezhda. The Doctor had been absolutely insistent on his presence, pointing out that with all due respect to Heviniye's diplomatic skills, the ordinary folk sometimes did it best.

"So, we're here, and on time for once. What's the plan?"

"Amy, I do believe it's a bit rich for you to be teasing me about lateness right now," the Doctor chided her gently.

"Oh please. Twelve hours, not twelve years. Plus another two."

He sighed. "You're never going to let that go, are you?"

"Nope, not if I live to be a thousand. Which I might, so be warned. Anyway – got any ideas? We're here, back where I started, in a room full of boxes."

"Yeah, got a thing."

"Last time you said that I almost got a bit too friendly with a bunch of Weeping Angels that I couldn't even see," she pointed out.

"But we survived that, didn't we?"

"Barely. So what's the thing?"

"Clever thing. Still working on it, shush now."

Amy rolled her eyes and turned to Rory, who was picking through one of the many grey plastic boxes lining the ceiling-high shelves.

"You OK? Sorry about running off like that. You know how it is – star about to blow up, ten billion people about to die. I couldn't resist. It's in my blood, I guess." Rory faced her and smiled, briefly burying the doubts and misgivings about their relationship that had built up over the course over the last few days and weeks.

"Like I could have stopped you."

"And don't you forget it."

He laughed, but quickly adopted a more solemn expression.

"But seriously, Amy. I know what you are and I'm starting to get a feel for what that means, but that doesn't mean I won't worry about you."

She pouted. "You take all the fun out of life."

"I can't help it. Even Time Ladies need someone to watch over them every now and then."

Amy sighed. "All right. But don't think I won't be returning the favour. With interest," she replied demurely, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

* * *

><p>"Corner check."<p>

"Clear."

"Clear," came the response from behind.

"Move."

The group followed General Gordost around the corner, cat-lithe. Not a sound was made as they moved into the next corridor – so much so that they couldn't even hear their own individual movements above the gentle whirring of machinery that pervaded the starship. The intent and efficiency of their motions belied the crushing despair and sense of failure beginning to dwell heavily on each and every man – for they all knew they had failed. They would fail. There simply wasn't enough time to reach the command centre, let alone disable it somehow.

The story was the same for the Navigation team when Gordost checked in, now bereft of its leader and the critical advantage she had given them. The Weapons Control team had briefly still maintained hope that they would reach their target with time to spare, but the security presence around that area had suddenly increased – there was no hope for them now either. It was futile, simply futile.

But they were a highly disciplined, professional and fiercely proud lot. They would do their duty to the bitter end – and beyond.

The only fragment of a hope remaining, the last flicker of light at the roof of the bottomless abyss they found themselves in, was a young, fiery alien girl and her friends.

* * *

><p>The five slipped out of the storeroom and into the corridor, the Doctor leading the way with Amy and Rory close behind, sonics at the ready. Heviniye followed cautiously with Nadezhda, struggling to walk straight due to nerves, bringing up the rear.<p>

"Er, Doctor? Where are we going? Command centre?" Amy whispered.

"No, no, of course not."

"Then where? Navigation team? Kinda feel bad about leaving them behind, you know, they sort of need my help."

"No time."

Amy bit her lip. "I could go and help them while you lot move on. They really do need a hand," she suggested, recalling the incident in the hallway.

"Hey, you're not going anywhere on your own." Rory hissed.

Amy rolled her eyes. "I didn't say I was going _alone_, numpty. But I appreciate the concern." She smiled and squeezed her fiancée's hand.

"Amy, I said no. Too dangerous, and we don't have the time."

"But, Doctor-"

"Amelia, _**no.**_**"**

As usual, the use of his native tongue cowed the Scottish girl, although she maintained a sulky, worried pout. The Doctor was immensely thankful for this, as it seemed to be the only thing that worked nowadays. He had a sneaking suspicion that even this last resort would eventually lose effectiveness, something he quickly filed in Things That Shouldn't Be Contemplated.

"Alright. So where are we going?"

"Not far away."

"_Where?"_

He sighed. "Always so demanding. Fine. This ship is huge, it must have a PA system somewhere to send messages. If we can find a local control station and hack into it, I'll have a little chat with this leader of Theirs."

Behind the Doctor, the other four met each other's eyes briefly. _This... this is the plan?_ Heviniye was the first to speak up.

"Not to be rude, Doctor, but They _are_ trying to commit planetary genocide. I don't know if a talking to will dissuade them."

"Nonsense. Anything can be solved by a good amount of talking with a dash of running around. Occasionally you might have to yell a bit, but that's what Amy's here for."

"Oi!"

"Kidding."

Heviniye pursed her lips. "Diplomacy is wonderful, Doctor, but sometimes a bit more force is necessary – diplomacy just doesn't cut it."

"Wrong. So wrong." the Doctor replied, a hint more forcefulness in his voice.

Heviniye sighed. "Well, you're the Time Lord. We have no choice but to trust you."

"Believe me, Heviniye, that means a lot to me. I _will_ save your planet."

They continued on silently for a few more minutes, bypassing a guard along the way, before Nadezhda's concern about the apparent paucity of the plan overcame his nervousness.

"Er, Doctor, I don't wish to rain on the parade, so to speak, but I know a thing or to about Their technology. Their security systems, both software and hardware, are without peer in this galaxy."

"Nothing's impossible. Surely it can be reverse-engineered, and if you can reverse-engineer something, you can hack it."

"Well... yes, you can."

"Of course you can. I know you've done it yourself, for instance."

Nadezhda blanched. "How... how did you know that?"

"I've been around, mate. I can tell when a piece of technology doesn't belong in a shop."

"Yes... well... it was years ago, and it wasn't especially successful. I was only trying to see what secrets I could employ in my own devices, gain a competitive advantage."

The Doctor grinned and patted the shopkeeper on the back. "Well, that time you didn't have a sonic screwdriver. Two, in fact – although the other one is a rather ugly looking sonic phone." He added, ignoring the steel-melting glare Amy had given him. Nadezhda blanched as the implication of the Doctor's words hit home.

"Wait... you're – you want _me_ to do it?"

"'Course. Who else?"

"Doctor, I'm just a-"

"A shopkeeper. I know. And soon you'll become the most famous shopkeeper in the history of Stroyet. Sounds good, eh?" Nadezhda didn't look at all convinced, and was busy mustering some – any – form of protest when Rory cut across him.

"Er, Doctor?"

"Yes, Rory?"

"So we find this PA system, and hack into it, and talk to them – and then what? They'll find out where we are, and then it'll be the five of us, unarmed, versus however many soldiers with guns they throw at us."

"Well, yes, if we stay there, we'll all be killed. Correct."

"And so...?" The Doctor's grin only widened.

Amy narrowed her eyes. "That's not _all_ there is to this plan, is there? Come on, spit it out, you've got more up your sleeve." He remained silent, grinning from ear to ear. "_**Come on, Doctor. You can tell me at least.**_"

"_**Ah, Pond.**_" The Doctor's eyes glinted mischievously even in the dull shadows of the cleft in which they were hiding. "_**Where's the fun in that?**_"

* * *

><p>"We've completed a thorough analysis of the recording. It's definitely not related to any tongue in our database – the syntax, grammar and pronunciation are all from a linguistic base that doesn't have any overlaps with any other language we've ever encountered."<p>

"Is that all?" _I've already worked this all out myself,_ the leader thought, anger growing within him at the disturbance. The operator gulped, seeing the fire growing in his eyes.

"I would hazard that this language is completely unique to one planet, possibly requiring some genetic ability to understand."

"_And so?"_

"I – I had a hunch that there was some separate signal, a - a translation signal," the operator stammered. "And I found something – a concurrent signal running at the same time."

"So whoever this was has some sort of advanced encryption technology?"

The operator shook his head so rapidly it seemed to blur. "No - no, sir. The FTL frequencies that this signal are in are usually discounted as quantum noise – they are way beyond the scope of any technology ever developed, by Us or anyone else. Physically, they - well, they shouldn't be usable."

"But someone has."

"It seems so. There's more," the operator added quickly, growing in confidence now that he wasn't in danger of being... punished. "I decided to expand the search, see if any of our sensors had picked up these signals. There were a few blips here and there all over the ship, slightly stronger than normal, but a while ago there was a huge spike in this frequency."

"Where from?"

"Too large. I've never seen a signal this intense, from any frequency. It almost broke all our sensors, even though it wasn't supposed to be looking for it. But I think it originated from somewhere on this ship. There was no associated FTL communication or anything else, just this one massive signal."

The leader pursed his lips, deep in thought. "Do you have any ideas for what this is?"

The operator shrugged. "I'm not sure. Some sort of super-advanced encryption? A special translation field? Telepathy?"

The leader remained silent for a moment, buried in his own contemplations, but after a few seconds his eyes suddenly widened and his head shot up. "Wait. What was the last one?"

"Telepathy? I would find that highly unlikely though."

"That's why you're not the leader," he snarled, brushing the young man aside as he strode down the glittering hallway connecting his personal observation deck to the rest of the flagship.

* * *

><p><em>Two heads are better than one<em>, the old saying went.

This was certainly true of Time Lords and sneaking around a massive starship undetected. It quickly became apparent that the Doctor was in fact exceedingly adept at stealth, spotting tiny clefts and little hiding spots from guards standing in particular locations that even Amy would never have dreamed of.

_Why can't he be this careful all the time,_ she wondered. _Less fun, I guess._ For her part, she continued to delight in disabling guards in amusing and often painful manners – sometimes a bit more often than was strictly necessary, earning her a few disapproving glares and sharp rebukes from her Time Lord counterpart. She, of course, completely ignored him.

Three hours of sneaking and about a dozen very confused guards later, they reached their destination, a tiled white room with a grey computer console next to a large steel box on the opposite wall. As they entered, the Doctor thought he heard a small gasp and another jolt of fear emanate from his friend. He turned to her, concern on his brow.

"Amy, you alright?"

She smiled, recovering herself in a flash. "'Course. I'm fine. Always fine."

"Sure?"

Amy's eyes narrowed, in that all too familiar _you might be a Time Lord, but you're not my mother, so shut up before I hit you sort of_ way, named so because she'd used those exact words to accompany that facial expression. And then she _had_ actually hit him.

"_Sure._"

"Okay, okay, just checking," he muttered, judging that his curiosity was not worth another nasty bruise at this point in time. "Alright. Nadezhda," he said, sonic-locking the door. He grabbed the phone out of Amy's surprised hand, shoving both it and his own screwdriver into the shopkeeper's palms. "Let's get working."

Nadezhda looked at the two strange devices in his hand. "Er... Doctor? How do I use these?"

"Keypad controls the frequencies. Think you'll find the combinations from 5102 to 5304 particularly useful," the Doctor replied from the steel box, his hands already busy at work with the jumble of wires within.

"And the other one? The green one?"

"Psychic interface. Just point and think – it's much more efficient," he added, having already seen that there were no loose objects lying around the room that could have been used as a missile by a certain offended redhead.

Nadezhda swallowed. "Doctor, are you absolutely sure I should be doing this? Not you?"

"I don't have any expertise with this stuff – you would be far quicker. Trust me, Nadezhda, you'll do fine. In fact, you'll do amazing. No, actually, after this, I'll get Heviniye here to make a medal for you. Call it the 'Saved Ten Billion People' award."

Nadezhda had to chuckle at that. "If you say so." He took a deep breath, used the screwdriver to expose the inner workings of the computer console and set to work. "Let's go and save ourselves a planet."

* * *

><p>It took him less than ten minutes to reach the command centre – a personal record (not that anyone was measuring). He stepped inside, leaning over the railing on his own special balcony above the darkened, reddish room, filled with blinking small electronic lights.<p>

"I need to activate the PA system_. _Right now."

"It will be done, leader," an operator below him replied, turning to a screen and expertly running his hands over the keyboard. However, rather than tell the leader the PA was ready for use, he leaned forward and frowned. "Wait... who...?"

"What? _What?_"

"Someone... someone seems to have hacked into our network and taken control of it. That shouldn't be possible..." he trailed off, staring astonished at the screen.

"Find the hacker. _Now!"_ He screamed at no one in particular. No fewer than five different people – not all in security related jobs – bowed, muttered hasty acknowledgements, and shot out of the room. Their footsteps had not yet faded when a disembodied, booming voice resonated from the speakers embedded in the ceiling.

"Well, hello there. I'm the Doctor. Fancy a little chat?"

* * *

><p><strong>Something tells me the Doctor isn't about to invite our robed friend over for playtime, wouldn't you agree?<strong>


	11. How To Kill A Star

**Sorry about the delay, all. An enormous backlog of uni work has built up over the last week, and I need to deal with it post-haste, and will be doing so for quite some time. Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere. I've actually written almost all of the next chapter (which will end this particular little story arc) and have a few more chapters on the boil after that.**

**Reviews etc. - you know the drill.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 11. How To Kill A Star: 13 October 2010<strong>

Utter silence. No one in the room dared even breathe too loudly, let alone move. The Doctor's voice boomed out of the speakers once more.

"Well, come on. I know you're mere minutes away from popping a star and wiping out ten billion people, but surely a friendly conversation would go amiss?"

The leader moved slowly down the stairs towards the PA terminal, his hands balled into fists and his eyes slits of raw fire. He reached the PA terminal and activated it, his voice kept artificially level and dangerously quiet.

"Welcome to the ship, Time Lord."

"Ah, so you were expecting me! No need to worry about the welcoming party though, did fine on my own."

"You're not as subtle as you think, Time Lord. We've been detecting strange signals coming off this ship for close to a full Stroyet day now."

A brief silence.

"Er, well, yes, that can happen. Still, had a good look around. Love the décor, very... clean. What's your name, by the way? Oh right, you lot don't have names; that's inconvenient. How about Jack? Great name, got a friend called Jack. Biggest flirt in the universe I'd say, and that's saying-"

"What do you want, _Time Lord?_"

The Doctor's voice remained bright and cheery, but a slight yet perceptible note of menace had crept into it. "Ah, well, boring question. The interesting question is, what do _you_ want, Jack? From this? From killing ten billion innocent people?"

"Innocent?"

"Yes, _innocent_. Stroyet hasn't attacked, threatened or damaged any other planets in generations."

One of the operators signalled to the leader. Grim, mirthless amusement entered his voice as he acknowledged the gesture. "Ah, Time Lord. You really have no idea who we are, do you?"

"Well... you're blowing up a star in about an hour's time, and you, erm, like the colour grey. Alright, you got me on that one."

"How about we show you? You wanted a conversation. It's only polite that we have it face to face."

"Love to, but would rather not. Obvious reasons. Sorry, Jack."

The leader's mouth broke into a smile for the first time in days – a smile borne of cruelty, glacier-cold and devoid of all mirth. "Time Lord, I don't think you have a choice in the matter."

"Nonsense. Always have a choice. A PA link is a perfectly good medium for a negotiation, anyway."

The leader's brow briefly furrowed, puzzled. "Negotiation? Ah..." he sighed as realization hit him, his smile widening. "You brought Secretary Heviniye along, did you? Even better. Then our _little chat_ will be even more lovely. Farewell for the moment, Time Lord. We will see each other shortly."

He deactivated the PA, turned to the guard leader and nodded. "Do it."

* * *

><p>General Gordost was worried. Very, very worried. For starters, he didn't like that a piloting error had left their original plan completely unworkable. He didn't like the new plan, related to him by General Pond who had unexpectedly caught up with them several hours beforehand – it seemed to rely an awful amount on one very, very big risk. Most of all, he <em>especially<em> didn't like that he could physically count down the minutes until his star died, taking his planet and his people with it. He glanced at his timekeeper.

"Two hours, General Pond."

"_Amy_. Please."

"My apologies, Amy. As I was saying, two hours."

The girl closed her eyes, furrowing her brow as if trying to sense some invisible field around her as the group hid in a darkened server room. _She probably is,_ the General thought shrewdly.

"Should be enough. Just. We'll have to hurry. Will the other groups make it in time?"

"They should, yes. We had made by far the most progress and the corridors leading towards the command centre, naturally, are the most heavily defended area of the ship. If we make it, so will they."

Amy smiled. "That's why they pay you the big bucks, General."

"Sorry?"

"Never mind." Her smile faded as she returned to concentrating on the task at hand. Rory, sitting next to her, looked on in mild wonderment – she'd never seen Amy so sombre, so serious before.

_She really takes this Time Lady stuff seriously, doesn't she?_

"Not much good if we don't, though. Best get moving again," Amy declared, standing up and re-equipping her phone, rest break over. Rory had to be dragged up by his fiancée – unfortunately, as the only human in the group, his endurance levels were considerably lower than the others. Amy had already started teasing him about it. He didn't bite back – he knew that if he complained, Amy would insist on them taking more breaks for him (during which she would mercilessly poke fun at his tiredness), meaning they would be cutting their timing even finer. Rory didn't want ten billion people to die either. Besides which, he ended up getting his revenge in some small manner, as Amy was now becoming quite tired of the 'General Pond' moniker.

Back in the present, Amy was pressing her head to the door, an action that Rory had found odd at first, but he'd since ascertained that it was her way sensing stray emotions and thoughts – and hence other people – on the other side. It was a unique skill, based on how she'd just smirked when he'd asked if the Doctor was capable of the same. Here she'd evidently detected none, as she quickly sonic-unlocked the door and lead the group out of their hiding place, Gordost and Rory immediately behind her.

They continued at previously unprecedented speed down the dim steel-lined corridors, a mixture of Gordost's military expertise and Amy's natural ability ensuring their pace was high and their chance of detection was low. Despite this, the General's worry only increased as the minutes continued to tick down relentlessly, a gradual and unstoppable force inexorably leading towards the death of his people.

"Forty-five minutes. I hope to high heaven this plan works. If you'll forgive me for saying so, Amy Pond, it doesn't strike me as watertight. I just pray that the Doctor knows what he's doing."

She smiled. "Don't worry. He does. He always does. Even when he looks like he doesn't – which is quite a lot of the time."

The General studied the youthful redhead carefully. "You don't strike me as someone who's just going to go along with everything he says."

The smile wilted slightly, and there was brief silence as Amy weighed up her response. "You're right," she began, slowly, "I don't. But I should. He's always come through for me, and he's the most important person in my life – well, second most," she added briefly after receiving a reproachful look from Rory, "But – I don't know... I should. I should. Right now, at this moment, I am."

He fixed his eyes on the Time Lady's, watching them flicker enigmatically in the dull corridor lighting. He could see the vibrancy of youth there, accentuated by her nature, as well as relentless optimism, boundless determination and strength... but there was more. He had been around in his long life – he could recognise pain, mistrust, vulnerability when he saw it, and it was there. Buried deep within the green wells. So deep, so hidden by layers of defences that he wasn't even sure _she_ was fully aware of it.

The girl noticed him staring and gave him a querying look, and he snapped his gaze back to the front and centre. He choked off his previous train of thought and returned his concentration to the present task. There was a planet to save.

* * *

><p>The leader had returned to his balcony overlooking the command centre. Despite the unexpected and very pleasant windfall that he was about to take custody of, it had been an unexpected twist to proceedings. He didn't like unexpected, especially not at this critical stage, so had decided to personally oversee the last part of the operation.<p>

His burning worry and horror when he had last stood on the same balcony, having just surmised that the one thing, the one force that could disrupt this plan had been aboard his ship for _hours_, had vanished. It had been replaced by pure elation and anticipation, stemming from the removal of this final threat, from the final completion of a decades-long vendetta and from the fact that he would be able to _show_ Secretary Heviniye, leader of those hated stroyeteli, their final defeat.

He had no intention of killing either of his captives. Heviniye would be stew as the last of her kind, just as he and the rest of his crew had done for years uncounted. As for the Time Lord... well, he couldn't exactly learn how to pilot a TARDIS on his own, could he? A preliminary search had revealed no clues as to its location aboard the ship, but it was a low priority matter. Without the Time Lord, it wasn't exactly going anywhere. As a completely unnecessary precaution, he had doubled the security on the critical corridors leading towards the command centre, navigation and weapons systems nonetheless.

At that moment, the Doctor and Heviniye entered the room, handcuffed and flanked by a pair of black-clad guards and a stroyeteli he didn't recognise at all. The guards stood ready, guns trained on their charges – security was necessarily somewhat light _within_ the command centre, as there already was barely enough space to go around anyway, so no one was willing to take any chances.

The leader descended the balcony and appraised the Time Lord, taking in his youthful appearance and strange attire.

"I must admit, Time Lord. I am somewhat disappointed. I would have thought the man who has single-handedly defeated both the Time Lords and the Daleks, multiple times, would have found something better to wear than a bow tie."

The Doctor bristled indignantly. "Oi! They're cool."

The leader laughed, the sound echoing through the chamber, as if he were a parent dealing with a petulant child.

"And Secretary Heviniye," he said as his gaze fell upon her, eyes narrowing with hatred as he took in the stiff-backed suited woman. "I have nothing to say to you, or your people. I only require that you watch."

The woman said nothing, only returning the contempt in equal measure with her eyes.

"Why are you doing this?" the Doctor asked, struggling vainly against his bonds. "What's in it for you? Who are you, anyway?"

The leader smiled. "Well, let's answer that last question first, shall we?"

The leader raised his hand, open-palmed, holding it directly before the Doctor's eyes. They widened in realisation.

"Six fingers..." he whispered. "You're stroyeteli."

"We are _not_ stroyeteli," the leader replied, spitting out the final word in disgust. "We are Them. The ones that they abandoned, forgot in a distant planet, no family, no hope of aid or deliverance, to rot and wither. And all in the name of _good business practice. _All those who were not worthy of partaking in your little paradise planet you call home. Well, no more. No more paradise planet. We are the abused and maligned prisoners, taking Their revenge on those who spat at them, threw stones and jailed Them for a crime they did not commit."

"You are our _children. _Our _brothers_." Heviniye replied, disgust and horror permeating every word.

"Your _children?_" The leader laughed bitterly. "Do you throw your _children_ onto the street to wither and die? Do you abandon your _brothers_ in a god-forsaken hell hole with no means of survival? We are as much the children of Stroyet as, well, Stroyet itself will be. In half an hour or so."

The Doctor sighed in mock boredom. "Sorry for interrupting this _fascinating_ monologue," he interjected, voice dripping with sarcasm, "but where did you get this ship, out of curiosity? And all the others in this fleet?"

"Some of Us were left at old, dilapidated industrial sites. We recycled the technology and used it to start our revolution. Once We were organised, like the beginnings of an avalanche on a snow-covered mountain, We were unstoppable."

The Doctor groaned. "Great. Now pulling out all the similes, too. HologramTropes would have a field day with you. Doesn't matter – because this ends here. It ends now." The leader laughed again, a great booming laugh of astonishment and amusement at the pitiful defiance of the last of the Time Lords.

"Please, Time Lord. I am fully aware of what you are capable of, which is why you are here. With me, in my sight. You are not a magician, you cannot suddenly undo those handcuffs and grab your sonic screwdriver to disable all our weapons. This plan will succeed, soon, with both of you watching. In just fifteen minutes you will see just how to kill a star. You are all alone, bow-tie wearing Time Lord." The mocking tone on the last five words was unmistakable.

The Doctor swallowed a deep breath, readying himself. "OK. OK. Where to begin... firstly, they're cool. And they always will be. Secondly, my name is the Doctor, so please at least have the courtesy of using it or I'll start calling you Jack again. Thirdly, good job on the whole 'grab the sonic' thing, 'cos I'll admit that that's exactly what I _would _do if I could undo these handcuffs. Which I can't." He paused, lip curling every so slightly as he felt the tiniest rush of displaced air passing over him, imperceptible to all but a Time Lord.

_Thank you Amelia Pond. Told you it would be worth keeping in mind for the future._

* * *

><p>"Nope, Amy, still big, blue, and very visible."<p>

A loud and strongly Scottish-accented string of expletives and other associated curses followed, some in English and some in what Rory presumed was Gallifreyean. He smiled – Amy's temper had always been one of her more endearing qualities. When not directed at him, anyway. He heard the stamping of feet, the creaking of metal against metal and a few more dark curses.

"Alright, trying another one," came the muffled voice from within the TARDIS. "Ready in three... two... one."

A reverberating hum and a shiver ran through the floor. The TARDIS faded into the blackness behind it. _So either it worked or she's gone off somewhere by accident_, Rory thought, slightly nervously.

"Er... Amy? Still there?"

"'Course I'm here, moron," came the irritated reply. Rory had to laugh.

"OK, OK, just checking. Thought you might have flown off by accident or something."

"_Accident?_ You doubting my flying skills now?"

"Of course not. It worked, by the way. Can you open the doors for me? Can't exactly see them, you know."

Out of nothingness a door opened, and the redhead pulled him inside. Gordost and all the assembled troops were waiting within, packed into the console room. Nadezhda had withdrawn inside, sensibly deciding not to partake in the next part of the plan. Fortunately there was little space to move around inside, which meant little space for a private chat – Rory had already caught Amy flirting with three different soldiers _and_ the Captain. _She'll never change, will she? _At the moment, however, she was pacing the console, murmuring to herself.

"Alright, so cloak _on_," she muttered, one finger on her mouth and the other pointing at the console panels. "Engine silencers _on._ I think." She paused, briefly making sure that she had heard the Doctor correctly. "Yeah. Blue levers on the second panel. Okay... I think we're good, General."

The General checked his timekeeper. Fifteen minutes. It was time.

"Ready, Amy Pond?"

Amy grabbed her sonic phone in one hand and gripped the flight lever. "Ready. Let's do this thing."

* * *

><p>The leader's eyebrows were raised. "And so...?"<p>

"Oh. Yes. Sorry. Up to four, aren't I? Right. Four, you're correct in saying that I would just sonic – no I've already said that. Try again. Four, your plan will _not_ succeed, and Heviniye and I will _not_ be watching Stroyet get pulverized, because it will not happen. Not today. And five, I've always loved fishing, how about you? Wonderfully relaxing past time, especially good on Callista Beta." An indulgent, knowing smile had found its way onto the Doctor's lips.

The leader's eyes narrowed at the smile. "Time Lord, in case you had forgotten, you are alone, the last of your kind. And you will not be doing anything now."

The smile remained fixed. "Well, _Jack_, as far as big pronouncements go, that wasn't too bad. I'll give you a pass. But unfortunately, it doesn't make any difference. I won't be the one stopping you, but it will happen. I assure you."

The leader chuckled at his continued stubbornness. "And who, pray tell, will be stopping Us if not you?"

"_Me._"

The leader whipped around to see a flame-headed girl, green eyes blazing fiercely, holding a strange device with a gleaming crystal attached to the end.

A buzzing noise, a brilliant purple light, and all hell broke loose.

* * *

><p><strong><strong>Should mention. It's not <em>the<em> Jack, as in it's not Jack Harkness. It's the name the Doctor came up with - "the leader" is a rather lame moniker to be repeating out loud. _The_ Jack will probably make an appearance soon.****


	12. Just Another Day At The Office

**CHAPTER 12. Just Another Day At The Office: 13 October 2010**

In the maelstrom of alarms, shouting and associated gunfire that followed Amy's entrance, it occurred to her that it was a bloody good thing that she had found the 'disable guns' setting on her sonic. Perhaps it would become a speciality of hers.

Right now, however, there were more important things at hand. Such as thanking Rory for saving her life – or at least _this_ life.

As soon as they'd landed, she'd impulsively raced out of the TARDIS, hell-bent on rescuing the Doctor from his self-imposed captivity. She'd managed to fizzle the rifles of both the guards before they filled her body with supercharged steel, rendering them little more than heavy clubs.

Unfortunately, heavy clubs were still _heavy clubs_ – in addition, _these_ were made of metal and wielded by two men with (literally) superhuman strength. They both instantly charged straight at her, eating up the metres separating them with impossible speed. Amy tried to back up into the TARDIS, but they were gaining on her far quicker than she was heading towards the still-invisible box. They were raising their once-rifles to cave her skull in when two enormous cracks sounded behind her and both men fell dead at her feet. She turned around, breathless, and saw her wide-eyed fiancée wielding two futuristic pistols.

There was silence for a moment, as all present took in the events of the last few seconds. Then the room erupted with noise as the soldiers streamed out of the TARDIS, and the guards, having heard the unmistakable sound of gunfire, rushed into the control room. The Doctor, Heviniye and the leader all dived for cover in separate directions. Amy and Rory simultaneously grabbed each other and did the same.

"Thanks," Amy said, panting, still deep within an adrenaline rush.

"Don't mention it, 'cos I will," Rory replied, smiling.

"You better not," she threatened lightly.

"Yeah, I better not," he admitted. She squeezed his hand and poked her head above the low wall that marked the edge of someone's workstation.

"You see the Doctor?" Rory asked, not willing to chance his arm – or head – unless absolutely necessary.

"Yeah. Well, no. But I know where he is."

"As long as he's fine," Rory said, leaning back on the low wall as the sound of the firefight continued to fill the room, sparks from gunfire striking bare metal flying across the dimly lit space.

Amy shook her head. She needed to be sure. She tightened her grip on her sonic phone and took one of the pistols out of Rory's hand.

"Wait," he said as Amy turned around, crouching just below the level of the wall, tensed like a cat poised to strike. "What are you doing?"

"What do you think?"

"Amy, wait! No! Amy!" But he was too late. She had already sprung up from behind the wall, darting between the computer terminals, firing both her sonic and her gun at any presence she instinctively felt was vaguely hostile. Shimmering blue streaks rent the air around her, and Rory watched in terror as one passed far too close to her for comfort, then another...

_Oh, dear god, that was far too close. She's going to get herself killed..._

* * *

><p>The Doctor watched the scene unfold in equal parts sheer terror at the danger his closest companion was placing herself in, amazement at her nerve, and swelling pride at her dedication. Acting on nothing but instinct, she'd somehow managed to avoid the crossfire that had filled the room and reach him amidst the smoke, sparks and deadly beams erupting from the firearms of the eighty or so soldiers that now occupied the command centre. She dived down between a pair of computer consoles, its operators both having managed to flee, and ended up on her belly right in front of him.<p>

"Hello," she said in a breathless, slightly sing-song voice.

"Quite an entrance you made there."

She grinned. "I try. Learnt from the best."

A wry smile made its way onto his lips. "Maybe later I'll show you some other things I'm quite good at."

Amy cocked an eyebrow, still prone on the floor beside him. "Really, Doctor? Is this really important now, flirting?"

The Doctor's eyes widened. "I mean... that's not – er – I meant-"

Amy giggled. "Never mind, Doctor." _Hopeless, brilliant man. "_Here, I need to uncuff you." He held out his hands in front of her sonic and the steel rings popped open.

"Thanks," he said gratefully, wringing his chafed wrists as she lifted herself off the floor and into a more comfortable position. He poked his head above the collection of black computer boxes they had taken cover behind. "Looks like your folk are winning. Superior numbers and all that. You know," he continued, turning to Amy and eyeing the firearm in her right hand, "I usually don't have time for guns-"

"-but for me you'll make an exception. As you always do."

"Still don't like them."

"Yeah, that's what makes you so sweet. And what makes it so fun, too."

He sighed. "Pond, are you ever going to listen to me?"

She grinned. "Nope, and-"

"-don't you forget it. I know."

A thudding noise and a shower of sparks above them reminded the pair of their predicament. "OK." He breathed in, rubbing his hands together. "A bit longer. Good. So we need to go over there," he told her, motioning to a console about twenty feet away "and discharge all the weapon systems into space. Then we can pack up and go home." Amy glanced over at where he had indicated.

"Oh, typical. Back the way I came. Like always," she groaned.

"Look on the bright side: the gunfire's starting to die down now."

She raised her head cautiously above the steel makeshift barricades to glance around the room. He was right – the cacophony of noise was less from the cracking of gunfire, but rather the sound of arcing electricity from damaged equipment, sparks falling on the tiled steel floor and the groans of wounded men. Several minutes later and the sound of gunshots had died away entirely.

The Doctor sprang upright. "Well then! That was fun. In a manner of speaking. Is everyone alright? Heviniye?" A quavering voice answered him, and he moved over to remove the stroyeteli's cuffs. "Rory?"

"Yeah, fine. Is Amy OK?"

"Absolutely perfect. How about you, General? Everyone in one piece?"

"Not quite, Doctor." The General's voice was grim. "Lost fifteen men, another ten wounded, though none fatally. Captain's dead, too."

The Doctor closed his eyes. _Another fifteen lives you couldn't save._ He heard a gasp behind him, and didn't need to be looking to know what his friend was feeling, her hands over her mouth in horror. _Amelia, you can't always save everyone_.

"I'm sorry."

"I appreciate the condolences, Doctor, but that will be for another time. We're in range."

He snapped his thoughts back to the present. "Yes. Right." He strode over to the weapons control console and buzzed the sonic screwdriver over the panel, a light-blue holographic screen flickering into life in front of him. His hands flitted over the images on the screen, directing them in varied intricate patterns.

"_Weapons systems activated,"_ a disembodied, robotic voice droned from the speakers in the wall. Heviniye blanched.

"Wait – what do you think you're doing?"

"Discharging the weapons. Only way to ensure that that this fleet is harmless – use up all the ammo, so to speak. Don't worry, I'm not aiming anywhere near your star."

"_Coordinates confirmed. Power at one hundred percent. All atom-laser fuel loaded. Firing sequence initiated. Firing in ten... nine... eight..."_

* * *

><p>Amy watched the Doctor work the controls from behind, having briefly forgotten her horror at the news of the fifteen dead. <em>Yet another world saved. Just another day at the office, then.<em>

"_Seven... Six..."_

Just a few more seconds and ten billion people would be able to live their lives again, free from fear and the threat of annihilation. Her hearts were ready to burst out of her chest, beating with fierce pride, triumph, and... malice?

_What...?_

She turned to her right and saw a man, robed in grey with a single golden sash across his chest, on his hands and knees, out of sight of the Doctor and the soldiers beyond, crawling up to a console. A small device, similar to a flash drive, was in his hand. As the countdown fell to five, he reached the console and plugged it in. As he did so, his eyes locked with Amy's. She saw into them, the merciless, pitiless hatred filling their depths and vindictive triumph glazing their obsidian irises. Suddenly, she realised exactly what he was going to do. Raw fury, boiling hot and uncontrollable, rose up her throat.

_OH NO YOU DON'T._

She didn't even think about it. Her hand simply moved of its own accord.

"_Alternate co-ordinates entered. Please confirm override."_

* * *

><p>"<em>Five...<em>"

The Doctor stood back, admiring his handiwork. _Well, that went rather nicely, didn't it?_ _Seconds away now_...

Then as it had in the little shop, a tsunami of emotion of extraordinary strength slammed into his mind, flowing from the Time Lady standing just feet away. This time it wasn't fear, though. It was _rage_.

_Amy...?_

He spun around. He saw Amy purposefully extend her arm, anger and determination writ large on her face. Saw the oversized pistol in her right hand. Saw her take aim. _Amy... no..._

"_Alternate coordinates entered. Please confirm override."_

"_**AMY, NO!"**_

He was too late.

The echo of the shot deafened in the dead silence of the room. Everyone stared, open mouthed, at the Time Lady in absolute shock.

"_Alternate coordinates entered. Please confirm override."_

* * *

><p>The aquamarine sky above Stroyet stretched in the dazzling afternoon light, the rays of sun glimmering majestically on the glass-steel peaks of the sprawling metropolis below. Cloudless, warm, with a gentle breeze making its way down the skyscraper-lined glass canyons of the city, it was a perfect spring day, and one that normally would have seen droves of people in the great outdoors, soaking up the wonderful conditions.<p>

The streets, however, were empty, its usual inhabitants having finally decided to give up the pretence of normalcy and spend their final moments in the company of loved ones. A rumour had gone around the city that an enigmatic alien had come to their aid several days previously, and that the Stroyet top brass had joined her in a final desperate attempt to avert oblivion, but most dismissed that as absurdly optimistic wishful thinking. A few hardy – and mostly lonely – souls still remained outside, gathering in the various parks and open spaces of the city, feeling that there was now nothing better to do than to witness the death of their star.

One of them, a young, blond-hired man, formerly a student before studying had become a singularly worthless exercise, looked up at the clear, perfect blue sky, taking in its pristine beauty before it was torn asunder by the violent eruptions of an exploding star.

As he stared, a tiny speck of imperfection caught his attention. A little pixel of pure green. Then another. And another. Within seconds, dozens of little green specks of light had dotted the afternoon sky. Just as everyone said it would. The young man's heart leapt up to his throat.

_This is it._

The green dots began to move, tracing emerald-shaded lines against the aquamarine sky. The lines began to reach forward, stretching out to deliver doom to the young man and his people.

_This. Is. It. Minutes to go now. Last few minutes of my life. Of everyone's life._

He began to tremble, as a thousand desperate, random thoughts raced through his head. His last thoughts. The lines began to converge...

..._but not on the star?_

The thought came from nowhere, slicing in between hurried apologies to his mother and father for all the wrongs he had committed in his short life. The vivid green streaks moved ever closer and closer together, all seemingly rushing towards a single point in space, far away from the dazzling brightness of the star above.

They met...

A beacon of light, the greenest of greens, blazed forth from the point where the beams had converged. Brighter than any light ever seen, or would ever be seen on the surface of the planet. The man screwed up his face, averting his eyes and using his palm as a shield, but even then the dazzling intensity of the light permeated into every corner of his awareness. _This,_ he thought, _must surely be the end now._

And then it was gone. Just like that. The light was gone. No heat of cosmic fire, no rapturous cataclysms, no sign of anything untoward happening at all. Nothing but the murmuring of the wind and the distant chirping of birdsong.

He opened one eye, to see the world as it was a minute before. And another, to fully take in his surroundings. Completely the same, completely normal. No apocalypse. No doom. He looked up – the green lines had vanished. The star was still shining steadily, indomitably, as it had last minute, last hour, last day, last year. Just as it always had.

For a moment, shock and disbelief. Then a laugh. A laugh that grew to an unending outpouring of amazement, relief and joy. He ran through the streets, yelling like a madman, spreading the good news.

By sunset, ten billion people had joined him.

* * *

><p><strong>So we've reached the end of the Stroyet plot arc, which turned out quite a bit longer than I had originally envisaged. I might have to be a little less ambitious in future [BlatantLies]. To the forty-odd-ish who've Story Alerted this thus far, those of you who have Fav'd it, especially the reviewers and _especially_ RunawayTelephones for helping me edit, a heartfelt thanks for sticking through with me thus far. It makes this experiment of mine all the more worthwhile, and makes me all the more the determined to continue despite being buried six feet under with respect to uni.  
><strong>


	13. Nebulae, Textbooks and Tennis Racquets

**A more introspective chapter, this one. If people feel it's getting a little too heavy and needs a bit more light fluffiness, let me know. I will warn you that some of the stuff I have planned makes what has come thus far look featherweight in comparison. Oh, and if you hadn't twigged, telepathy isn't just another of Amy's Time Lord abilities - it's a critical theme of this story, and will become increasingly so as we go along. Which means I may do things that contravene parts of the utterly confusing mess of canon on the subject - so another warning there.  
><strong>

**Similarities to the finale (specifically, that frankly brilliant garden scene near the end. Amy being the Doctor's mother in law would be _so_ much fun to play with, but not here) are coincidental, one obvious line of dialogue aside - I had the key outline of this chapter planned well in advance.**

* * *

><p><em>In<em>_ war, __there __are __no__ unwounded__ soldiers._  
>~ Jose Narosky<p>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 13. Nebulae, Textbooks and Tennis Racquets: 13 – 22 October 2010<strong>

They didn't stay around to join the planet-wide party that was about to go into full swing. As much as they – especially Amy – had wanted to, they were all dead tired after the experiences of the past few days, and needed some downtime badly. So they dropped off the surviving soldiers, Heviniye and Nadezhda, promising to return one day to see how they were getting by. It had taken a while – Heviniye couldn't stop shaking their hands, repeating phrases like "can't thank you enough", "forever in your debt" and the like. At one point, she had promised that new prestigious medals would be named after Amy and the Doctor – Rory, unfortunately, didn't get that honour. He didn't mind.

"You think we'll see them again, General?" she asked as the police box faded in and out, the now familiar whirring noise slowly dissipating.

The General laughed, the first time he had done so in months. "I both hope we do, someday, and pray to heaven that we don't. Ever. Trouble follows them."

"I know what you mean by that."

* * *

><p>The Doctor was sitting in bed, propped up on several pillows, perusing through the greatest work of a famous Ryelli novelist. Amy and Rory had departed to their room an hour beforehand, and he was about to drift off himself when a shudder ran through the floor. Recognising it instantly, he grabbed his jacket and raced for the console room, his hearts beating frantically.<p>

_Where's__ she__ going __now?__ Why __isn't__ she__ asleep?_

He sprinted into the console room, then suddenly halted as he sighted a mane of shining red hair in the entrance doorway. Beyond was the instantly recognisable wash of colour of a planetary nebula, and he stopped for a moment to admire the interweaving of the golden, reddish and deep blue hues against the perfect blackness of space, speckled with little pinpricks of starlight.

He walked over softly, and sat in the doorway next to Amy, their legs hanging out of the TARDIS into space. She was slightly hunched over and a faraway expression etched onto her face.

"Hey."

She turned, smiling softly. "Hi."

"Got the randomiser working, did you?"

Her smile widened briefly, but then faded as she returned her gaze to the shimmering colours outside.

"You know, I recognise this place. Called Omega Zero. It's the last remnants of a dead star, which one day blew itself all over the cosmos. In fact, if I recall correctly, it's _your_ star. You're looking at its – well, it's corpse."

"Gee, Doctor, trust you to be so morbid."

He punched her lightly on the arm, receiving a not-so-light one in return. "Sorry for being so honest."

"Apology _not_ accepted," she retorted, laughing. Once again, however, the light moment was short-lived and her face returned to its previous wistfulness. They sat quietly for a minute, the Doctor eyeing his friend carefully.

"Amy, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"Rory told me you didn't have any dreams. Proper dreams, I mean. I know how human and Time Lord brains work, dreams can't be exclusively be memories, not for weeks on end. You're hiding them for some reason. Now that in itself is a pretty impressive achievement for a novice telepath like you, but – why? Is there something you don't want anyone to see? Something you're locking away from the world?"

She took a moment to answer. "Doctor, I appreciate your concern, but this isn't really something I want to talk about. Not today." _Not__ ever_, she didn't need to say. Her voice remained quiet, but there was a certain edge to it which told the Time Lord that now was not the time to push his curiosity further.

At least not directly, not right now. He had other ways of finding out information.

_And __this __is__ probably__ something __I __need __to __know._

"I understand," he replied sincerely. "I'm just a bit worried about you, Amelia."

"You always worry about me. Big worry-wart, you are."

"Guilty as charged," he admitted, his cerulean eyes twinkling in the starlight. "So is there a reason you're out of bed now, or were you just filled by a sudden urge to admire the magnificence of the cosmos?"

She leaned forward, resting her chin on her fists, her elbows digging into her knees. After a minute, she opened her mouth, her voice a near-whisper. "I killed someone yesterday."

Silence.

Amelia continued. "I pulled the trigger. What does that make me now?"

The Doctor didn't answer. He couldn't answer – because he had asked the same question of himself, and drawn nothing. For his centuries of life, everything he'd experienced, everything he'd seen and done, nothing could help him answer this one question, this single question, in a way that didn't leave him paralysed with guilt and despair. And now she would have to answer it too.

_What does that make us now?_

In some ways, this was his worst nightmare realised – his darkest, most closely-held fear, his deepest doubt now shared with the one closest to him. _The __curse __of__ the__ Time __Lords, __indeed._

After several minutes of silent contemplation, he reached out an arm and laid it across her back, pulling her into him. "You did a lot of good there. Don't forget that."

The girl shut her eyelids. "I was talking to him before we went to get you. The Captain. He had just gotten married, you know. Two months ago. He was planning to buy a little blue hut on a beach somewhere, enjoy the surf and the sand for a while once we succeeded. He was so sure we were going to win. So sure he'd get that little house with his wife."

A tear rolled down her left cheek, and the Doctor lifted his hand to wipe it away and brush a lock of fiery hair out of her face, gently tucking it behind her ear. He pressed his lips to the curtain of flame at the side of her head.

"You can't always save everyone, Amy."

"I took them there. They trusted me. They relied on me. And I failed them. Fifteen of them."

"But you saved so many more. Ten billion more. All alive, Amelia Pond, because of you. Don't ever forget that."

She smiled and closed her eyes, resting her head on the shoulder of the Doctor's tweed jacket, wrapping her arm around the Doctor's back in a mirror image of his. The Doctor reciprocated by placing his cheek on her thick red hair, gently massaging her arm. They sat there for time uncounted, perched at the edge of the police box, gazing at the intermingled smear of colour, the last of their kind.

* * *

><p>It took several days, but at last Amy's sense of guilt and shame seemed to be subsiding. Her aura was returning, the vibrancy in her eyes glinting in the light once more. The fire in her voice once again began to match the colour of the hair, and the spring in her step was becoming as pronounced as it had been previously. They'd even gotten into arguments about the TARDIS again, for which the Doctor was secretly glad – although dodging heavy books wasn't exactly a pleasant experience. He'd already spent several hours having Rory nurse a rather nasty bruise on his chest where he'd been struck by 'A Time Traveller's Guide To The Universe, Fifty-Fourth Edition'.<p>

The Doctor now knew her intimately, though, and he knew the burning doubts weren't gone - just buried within the sprawling defences that covered her emotions. He was aware from personal experience that the questions would never go away, but he was glad his Amelia Pond was coming back, with all the exasperation that occasionally brought. He knew she hadn't quite come completely to terms with it yet, so by unspoken agreement they'd stayed in the TARDIS for the last four days.

_A break from saving alien planets wouldn't go amiss from time to time, eh?_

Somehow, he was aware that she hadn't told Rory about their conversation at the Omega Zero Nebula, nor the several hours afterwards they had spent in each other's arms, sitting out of the TARDIS doors. He certainly knew that she hadn't shared any of what she had told him that evening with Rory. This worried him somewhat, as he feared that the pair was drifting apart.

Amy was his closest friend, the closest he'd had in... well, too long, and the closest thing he had to an equal. She could see things the way he could, think the way he thought, have a glimpse into the way he felt. A decade previously, he had despairingly come to the conclusion that he would never feel such a special kinship again, the one that only came with another of his species. To be able to experience it again... there were no words. Nonetheless, he worried, as she was still at her core Amy from Leadworth (_not Amy from __the TARDIS... yet_) and she belonged to Rory. Not to him. Even though they, together, were the last of their kind... he shut out the dark voices milling in the depths of his psyche, refusing to acknowledge that they were becoming less and less dark.

However, he made no attempt to draw away from her or to lessen the amount or quality of time they spent together, for that wasn't his biggest worry. His dreams – when he had them – now constantly centred on that wave of fear, the impossible surge of terror, emanating from billions and billions of miles away. Intellectually, he wondered how she was capable of generating such an immensely strong psychic impulse – he certainly had never done so – but that was very much a secondary concern. It was the _nature_ of the impulse that left him cold and shivering.

What could possibly have made her feel such an instantaneous but powerful sense of fear? What could trigger that?

He was determined to find out by any means possible. He'd asked Rory what dreams she'd shared with him.

"Yeah, about that," Rory had said over his breakfast cereal. Amy was in the middle of her half-hour long shower. "I'm not getting anything from her now, an image here or there, but other than that... is there something wrong?"

"No, no," the Doctor reassured absent-mindedly. "She's just getting better control of her psychic abilities, that's all. I'm sure she's fine."

The first part of that sentence was true, but he knew full well the second part wasn't. This wasn't just them drifting apart. This was more. Hence, he buried his doubts about becoming too close, for when she was happy, teasing, hugging and occasionally hitting him, her usually-imposing psychic barriers were low. Whenever they were close he entered into her mind under the cover of a twinkling smile and took a little peek. He was careful to ignore anything that wasn't directly relevant to his search, knowing he was already launching an appalling invasion of her privacy. He judged it was worth the risk.

_This __is__ something __I __need__ to know_, he told himself as justification. _I need to do this._

He just wished that Amy would stop bloody flirting with him whilst he did so.

* * *

><p>The gentle tickling of the softly flowing pool water against her feet had to be one of Amy's favourite small pleasures. It was her preferred form of alone-downtime, idly draping her legs over the edge of the pool whilst leaning against one of the fluffy-padded bookshelves. She'd sit for hours, feeling the sensations of the crystalline-blue water sliding between her toes, whilst she flicked through a novel, watched a 22nd century sitcom on a small tablet screen or browsed through some manual or textbook – the latter generally being an irritated response to some disagreement (Amy avoided the term 'catfight') with the Doctor.<p>

Today was an exception, as she flicked through the ancient (she'd taste-guessed it to be about four millennia old) Gallifreyean text. She wasn't a naturally bookish person unless she had to be – as was the case at school, especially high school – but right now she had to be.

It had been over a week since they'd left Stroyet. _A week since I killed that man..._ she hammered down on the thought, crushing it out of existence. Her actions that day had haunted her ever since, intruding into her dreams and leaving her staring aimlessly into space on more than one occasion. She felt akin to Lady Macbeth, remembering the play she'd studied when she was sixteen. _These spots won't go away, will they? _

She hoped she wouldn't become that. Hadn't become that.

Over time, the Doctor's final words to her that evening at the nebula began to assuage her conscience – pride for what she'd done was most certainly beyond her, but at least she could live in the knowledge that if it hadn't been for her actions that day, a hell of a lot of nice people would have died. So that made it alright... she hoped.

Out of kindness and understanding, the Doctor had decided to take a break from adventuring and saving planets for a while, knowing that she needed room to breathe and reassess. Whilst she couldn't bring herself to tell him aloud, she was immensely, endlessly grateful for it. No one, not her teachers at school, not Aunt Sharon, not even Rory, had been so quick to grasp her feelings, so in-touch with her emotions – a result of all those barriers she'd been building ever since she was a little girl. The Doctor seemed completely capable of simply going straight through them.

_Well, we are the last of our kind, he and I. Guess there's some kind of connection there that goes beyond just average human friendship._

However, as General Gordost had astonishingly surmised aboard the starship, she didn't let him through _all_ her barriers – especially not her most critical ones. As important as he was to her, as much as she loved both Rory and the Doctor with all her soul, there were some things she had sworn never, ever, _ever_ to show them. Or anyone else. Not even Prisoner Zero, with his horrible magic tunnel into her mind, had forced his way through these walls, although the effort to keep him out of these most secret of places had come far closer to breaking her than she realised.

Hiding these things was all well and good as far as Rory was concerned, her normal coarse exterior shell worked fine... but the Doctor was telepathic. And an expert.

She wasn't stupid. She knew what that strange presence, that odd _feeling_ in her brain was, sifting, poking, peeking. He was subtle, very, very subtle, and it took all her skill to even gain the merest flicker of a suspicion. But her intuition, always her driving force, _knew_. She'd tried asking the Doctor once, but he'd diverted, chuckled kindly and, of course, lied to her about it. That annoyed her as much as it _didn't_ surprise her, and she told herself off for being so direct. Then got her revenge by flirting with him until he physically started to colour under her gaze.

Amy knew he'd never, ever deliberately hurt her. He was only trying to help, trying to find out what was clearly her causing her pain. Maybe to try and understand. One part of her hearts ached with gratitude and love that he was making such an effort to try and reach out to her, but another part, colder, harder, stronger, was resolute. No one – not Rory, not the Doctor, no one – _ever_ got inside Amelia Pond's head without her permission. That was _her_ Rule One.

She had no intention of breaking it.

So she'd spent the best part of the last three days in the TARDIS library-pool, poring feverishly over every single book on telepathy, psychic powers and the Gallifreyean mind she could find, including a few that she suspected had never been touched. She'd told the other two that there was something important she needed to do and she would prefer not to be disturbed for quite a while, sonic locking the door to make sure they didn't. A sleeping bag and a rucksack full of food later, she quite literally camped next to the pool.

Unlike on previous occasions, she didn't skip the more difficult sections that would usually make her eyes glaze over. She'd read, re-read, cross-check, pull out every other book she'd need to understand every single sentence, every single little Gallifreyean accent that she saw. Then she made absolutely sure to commit it all to memory. It stayed.

She wouldn't confront him directly. Not, at least, whilst she was in control. Her greatest fear is that eventually his discreet probings would unleash the trapped storm within her, and she would lash out, doing something horrible, taking her revenge on him for an act of pure kindness. Once out of control, even she didn't know what she was capable of in her fury – as the leader of Them had found out to his cost. The last thing Amy wanted to happen was for her rage to be focused upon one of the only two people in her entire lifetime she genuinely felt close to. Nevertheless, she would shut him out in her own way. He was strong telepathically, so it would be hard for her to do so.

But she knew that she would be stronger. She had to be.

* * *

><p>"I swear, Doctor, you've gotta be cheatin' somehow," Amy accused, out of breath and a sheen of sweat glistening on her forehead as yet another green streak sailed just beyond the reach of her racquet. She'd finally left the library, nine days after Stroyet, having more or less completed the bulk of her task – there were still a few ancillary texts she wanted to peruse, but they could wait. The Doctor had challenged her and Rory to a tennis match, and she'd immediately replied "You're on." How could she refuse?<p>

Rory had had a bad feeling about the whole endeavour, though, feelings that had turned out to be very well-founded.

"Yeah, that's what Roger said too."

"Roger? As in _the_ Roger?" Rory asked, astonished.

"Well, yeah. Competitive bloke, him," the Doctor replied off-handedly, as he whacked another ball into play. He leaned against the net of the TARDIS tennis court. "Gotta say, though, trying to serve with the wrong hand is one of the more interesting things I've done of late."

Amy snorted as she returned. "Show-off."

The Doctor grinned. "Hey, I have to make it fair somehow, me versus you two. Although I gotta say, Pond, you aren't exactly pulling your weight here," he noted as he smashed another winner between Amy and Rory.

Amy made a face. "I so am," she lied. What she'd lacked in competence with racquet in hand – especially in comparison to Rory, let alone the Doctor – she made up for in swagger.

"Mm-hmm. Anyway – what are we doing tomorrow? Should we rebuild the snooker table? Think Amy should take the lead on that one, seeing as she was the one who destroyed it in the first place."

"Could we go somewhere? Nothing too fancy, just, umm, somewhere normal? Like London, 21st century. Just for a change."

Rory frowned at her. "Didn't you say you were bored of Earth a while ago?"

"That was last week. I could use a break from the running round starships thing, but it's getting kinda dull in here."

"No surprises there, given how you locked yourself in god-knows-where for three days." Amy ignored him.

Her eyes locked onto the Doctor's for a mere fraction of a second from across the court, but that was all he needed. _Welcome back, Amy Pond.  
><em>

"Normal, eh? Well, I guess we can do normal just this once. So, London, 21st century, you say? Hmm... let's see. 2047 – no, don't want to do that, nasty tornado there."

"A tornado? In London?" Rory asked, incredulous.

"Er, yeah. Someone accidentally pumped a few million volts into an experimental weather control station... don't really know about the rest."

"_Someone? _Who?"

"Er... no idea. 2012... no, Olympics on, far too busy. 2086, ditto. Plus the whole Earth-Mars war thingy kind of put a damper on the night-life. Let's stick to the mid-tens, nice quiet decade. Actually..." he trailed off, an idea striking him. He racked this eidetic memory for the entries of a list he'd seen a few weeks ago. _London,__ 2014,__ nice unoccupied point in his time-stream. __Yep.__ So__ he's__ there.__ Perfect__ distraction__ for __Amy while I do my thing, someone else for her to flirt with. __So __if __I__ could __find __him..._

"Doctor? You with us?"

"Hmm? Oh! Yes. Got a better idea, actually. Got a friend living in London in 2014, someone you'll want to meet."

Amy narrowed her eyes. "And is he _normal?_"

"Well, he's human, I'll give you that," he remarked airily as he hammered another ball past Amy's reach.


	14. The Distraction

**Rating reminder for this chapter (language).  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER<strong>** 14.**** The Distraction****:**** 23 ****October 2010**

The TARDIS materialised right in the middle of the sidewalk on Oxford Street, narrowly avoiding crushing several happy shoppers. The usual throng of Londoners continued to mill about in their way, absent-mindedly ducking around the TARDIS. They seemed totally and utterly unaware that a big blue box had suddenly appeared out of nowhere – and were likewise none the wiser that a girl and two men, one of whom was wearing a bow-tie, had not been there ten seconds previously.

"Er, Doctor?" Amy asked, looking apprehensively at the very conspicuous-looking time machine. "Won't someone kind of notice that a big blue box just appeared on Oxford Street?"

"Nope. Perception filter, works a charm. These folk won't even give it a second glance, bless them."

"What, so they'll just think the TARDIS is... part of the landscape?" Rory inquired, his eyebrows raised.

"Not quite. The filter works by tricking the perception centres of your brain into not noticing the specific visual patterns of the TARDIS and distinguishing them from the immediate surroundings... actually, on second thoughts, yeah, I guess you could say that."

Rory shook his head. "So... where's this friend of yours? Nearby?"

"He's _somewhere_ in London in 2014. Not sure precisely where. We'll find him, though."

"You mean you _don't know?_ London's a pretty big town in case you hadn't noticed."

"Hey, I narrowed it down to a fifty by fifty kilometre block on Earth. Pretty good when you have to search the whole universe."

"The whole _universe?_ Surely just Earth if he's human?"

The Doctor hesitated – once again, he'd made the mistake of underestimating just how perceptive the young man was, even in comparison to himself. "Erm – yeah, I had to widen the search parameters for this bloke, though. He gets around."

Amy groaned. "So much for normal."

"Says the human who turned herself into a Time Lady and a super-telepath."

Amy narrowed her eyes. "Super-what?"

"Nothing, nothing," the Doctor muttered. _Oops. Shouldn't have said that._

Amy craned her head to take in the busy street, her brow furrowed. "This is London, right?"

"Of course it's London. Don't you recognise it? Don't tell me you've never been to your own capital."

"I'm Scottish," she retorted. "But nah I've been to London, and it looks right but it just feels... weird. Alien, almost."

"Yeah, that'll be all the residual timey-wimey energy lying around, from y'know, visitors."

"Alien invasions, you mean."

"Basically."

Rory frowned. "Why would aliens want to invade London?"

"Fantastic question. Ask them. No clue why they keep doing it, but they keep doing it."

"I thought it was New York that would always get hit, like in the movies."

"A bit, but not early as often. First port of call for the discerning intergalactic invader, London. Let's see... Daleks a few times, Cybermen, the Nestene, Slitheen, Sycorax, the Racnoss, Adipose, Sontarans, the Toclafane... the lot, really. And that's just the early 21st century. Although I guess a few of those technically never happened."

Amy blinked. "Seriously?"

"Yep. Poor souls wizened up eventually and evacuated the city one Christmas because they thought they'd be invaded... humans. I'll never get done saving you."

"_Ahem_."

"Oh – sorry, Amy."

Amy rolled her eyes, her lip curled. Unbeknownst to her, Rory had a worried furrow between his brows, the untimely reminder of his girlfriend's inhumanity jarring him once more. He decided to steer conversation away from the uncomfortable topic.

"So, this bloke – you do know how to find him, right? We're not just going to walk all over London for a few days looking for people you might recognise, yeah?"

"Don't worry, I've got a good _feeling_ I know where he is. He sticks out, this bloke."

"A friend of the Doctor – I wonder why," Amy remarked dryly.

"Feeling sarcastic today, aren't we, Pond?"

She grinned and punched the Time Lord lightly on the arm. "I never said that was a bad thing, mister."

* * *

><p>Several hours later, night had fallen and the trio were walking through the quiet villa-lined streets of St John's Wood, having taken the Underground. This turned out to be a <em>much<em> more complex task then Amy and Rory had imagined (hence the delay), as they weren't counting on the stunning incompetence of the Doctor when it came to menial tasks such as 'buying a train ticket'. He'd watched intently as Amy and Rory purchased theirs, but when it came to buy his, he found himself both distracted and endlessly confused by the various array of destinations, ticket types and various other odds and ends which he had no idea how to discern.

"Amy, help me out here," he'd pleaded, somewhat pathetically.

The girl curled her lip and folded her arms across her chest. "Come on, it's only a train ticket. Surely it can't be more complicated than saving the whole world."

"Saving the world doesn't involve so many... _buttons!_" he countered, his wide eyes darting over the touch screen helplessly.

Amy sighed. "You're hopeless, ya know that?"

"If I say yes, will you help me?"

"Even if I was your wife I wouldn't. It's a bloody train ticket, you numpty. Sort it out."

Eventually the Doctor had given up and soniced the ticket machine, an action that immediately bore fruit. Unfortunately, this led to even _more_ wasted time as he spent quite some time spluttering to the security man, trying to explain precisely _why_ the ticket machine had suddenly decided to disgorge not just one ticket to St John's Wood but several hundred. As well as empty itself of all its change. Amy and Rory simply stood back and watched, palms on their faces in identical gestures of amusement and utter exasperation.

Eventually, Amy had had enough of the Doctor's cluelessness and a few sweet smiles, batted eyelashes and murmured suggestions later, they were on their way.

"So he lives here? We didn't just go to some random part of London for kicks?" Rory asked as they strolled down another street.

"Nothing wrong with that. You two certainly seemed excited by that pedestrian crossing we came across half an hour back."

Rory shook his head. "Don't you know _anything_ about modern culture?"

"Not really, no," the Doctor replied cheerfully. "Used to, but that was a past life. Anyway, we should be coming up on the right place soon."

Amy frowned. "You sure this is it? Nothin' weird going on around here?"

"Of course I'm sure. I'm always sure. Well, often sure. Usually sure."

"I'll take your word for it. Just... feel a bit strange, that's all. More than before. As if there's something not right around here."

"Yeah, know what you mean. Don't worry, though. Perfectly normal. Reasonably normal. Expected. That's a better word."

They turned another corner and found themselves in one of the few terraced streets in the suburb. Abruptly, the Doctor shot his hands out and stopped, causing Amy and Rory to bump uncomfortably into him.

"I assume this is it?" Amy asked, pushing his arm away and looking at the nondescript brick townhouse which they had stopped in front of.

"Just the one." He skipped up to the door, Amy following (with Rory behind as usual). A sharp, rapidfire rapping on the door and a few seconds later, it opened to reveal a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a steel-blue greatcoat.

His cloudy-blue eyes darted between the three, glinting with scarcely hidden mischief. Beneath, however, Amy thought she saw the markings and deep pools of darkness that she'd only seen in one other pair of eyes – eyes that she knew had already seen too much. Some strange instinct within her, borne out of the parts of her mind she'd only recently acquired, screamed at her to get as far away from the man as possible, but she shut it out.

_Doctor's friend, my friend. And he's kinda hot,_ she added to herself.

"Well, well," the man murmured, his lip curling. "I don't know who sent you three here, but remind me to buy them flowers." His gaze lingered appreciatively on Rory, then for somewhat longer on Amy. She felt a tinge of colour rising up her neck.

The Doctor shook his head. "Couldn't you at least wait until we said 'hello', Captain?"

The man snapped his gaze back to the Time Lord, and his eyes widened. "Doctor... is that you?"

The Time Lord's face remained impassive.

"It is, isn't it?" The man grinned. "Don't know about the bow-tie, though."

"Oi! They're cool."

A great big booming laugh and the Doctor found himself enveloped in a crushing bear hug that almost lifted him off the ground. "Good to see you again, old man. Digging the new face, I have to say."

The Doctor found himself smiling despite himself. "Not looking too bad yourself. Didn't think you'd be one to settle down like this, though."

"You know it's not that simple. But before that – who are your friends? Even by his standards, you two are smashing," the man said, turning his attention to Rory and Amy. Rory blinked and looked nervously down at his feet, and Amy felt herself blushing rapidly now. As usual when caught in an awkward place, she took the intiative.

"M'name's Amy Pond," she said, holding a hand out. He shook it vigorously.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Pond. Wait – you are Miss Pond, right? Not Mrs?" he inquired, throwing Rory a furtive glance.

"Miss Pond, yep. This is Rory, my, um-"

"-fiancée." Rory cut across her, slightly harsher than he intended. The man raised his eyebrow ever so slightly.

"Captain Jack Harkness at your service."

* * *

><p>"So how long have you been travelling with him?" Jack asked as he poured Amy and Rory a glass of some strange red liquid.<p>

"Er – what is this stuff?" Rory asked, eyeing the substance with severe apprehension.

"Anfil Extreme. Pretty common 51st century drink, everyone knows the recipe there. Don't worry, it's perfectly safe for humans. Has a hell of a kick, though."

"Amy, I wouldn't touch it if I were you," the Doctor suddenly said, just as the redhead was reaching out for her equally red glass. She pouted.

"Why not?"

"Wouldn't agree with your system." She looked to see the Doctor staring suspiciously at the drink in front of him. A millisecond of silent eye communication and it clicked. _Still not used to not being human_. "Fine for Rory, though."

"I'll pass." Rory, being a nurse, felt that drinking something that looked suspiciously like blood didn't strike him as something he wanted to do.

Jack grinned. "Your loss. Anyway – back to the question. How long have you two been travelling with the Doctor? He's got good taste, I'll give him that."

Amy giggled, which in turn provoked a tired groan from the Doctor. _Oh great. So should have seen this coming. Biggest flirt in the universe in the same room as the... other biggest flirt in the universe. Fantastic._

"We've been travelling together for a couple of months now," he said before Amy could respond and inflame (_no no think of another word)_ the situation further. "Anyway, that's all boring stuff. What happened to Alonso, by the way?"

"He was wonderful. Never got round to thanking you for that, did I? Lovely guy, miss him dearly." Muted pain filled his sky-blue irises.

"What happened to him?"

"What do you think?"

The Doctor paused and his eyes widened slightly, adopting a sympathetic expression. "Oh. How long ago?"

"Very. Still, 51st century nursing homes are a hell of a lot better than they are in the 21st, so I got as much out of it as I could have hoped for."

The Doctor smiled kindly. There were a lot of things about Jack he found very much disagreeable – his blasé attitude towards life and death, his chequered past as a Time agent, not to mention the fact that all his natural Time Lord instincts were shouting at him to get as far from the man as possible – but he was a good man. More importantly he was one of the few people who understood what the Doctor had to bear – age, and the pain that went with it.

"Sorry, not following," Rory cut in. "What's this business about a nursing home? You make it sound as if it were years ago."

A tired, aged smile. "Half a century, in fact."

Amy and Rory did identical double takes. "Sorry, what?" Amy spluttered. The man in front of them didn't look much more than forty. "I thought you were human!"

"I am. But a run in with a certain Bad Wolf left me completely immortal. I can't die, ever – no matter how hard I try. And yes, I've tried."

"A bad wolf?"

"Long story. Maybe later."

Amy snorted. "So much for normal, eh, Doctor?"

Jack grinned, the mischievous glint returning. "Fiesty, aren't you?"

"Problem with that?"

"Not at all. I envy you two... living normal, human, lives. Well, as normal as you can get around this guy." He clapped the Doctor on the back of his tweed jacket companionably. Amy was about to open her mouth to correct him, but the Doctor shot her a warning look. _Not yet, Amelia._ She sank back into her chair, remembering herself.

"You didn't answer my question from before, by the way. What're you doing back in 21st century London in a little townhouse? I thought Torchwood was gone?"

"It is. I'm not settling down here, if that's your thought. People are too... stingy around here. Nah, I was dropping by to check how Gwen was coping."

"I sense a story in the making."

"You'd be right on that."

The Doctor grinned. "Well, don't keep us in suspense."

"Honestly, it's not that exciting. You know the Precept?"

"50th century extremist Church splinter group. Disorganised rabble, not very accurate with a gun. Tried to steal my TARDIS once, didn't end well for them."

Jack chuckled. "Yeah, heard about that at the Time Agency. Well, someone seems to have given them a bunch of top-of-the-line vortex manipulators because I found signs of Precept activity all over the place when I came here."

"That'd explain all the funny temporal signatures littered all over the place." He stopped, contemplating for a second. "Sounds like someone's using them as hired muscle."

Jack nodded. "That was my thought too. Decided to have a little poke around – after all, catching these buggers was my job once upon a time."

"As you always do. So what are they up to?" A shrug.

"No clue. They're looking for information on something, that's all I can gather. Something to do with Time Lords, which obviously means you. That doesn't exactly narrow it down, though. I was going to try to find you to let you know, but stuff got in the way."

"Stuff does that. Don't see what this has to do with a little London townhouse though."

"Getting there. Couple of days ago I came across a few Precept mobsters. They were trying to kidnap a young girl, definitely for some nasty interrogation and almost certainly for worse. They didn't get too far, though."

The Doctor sighed. "Always with the guns, Jack?"

"They come in handy from time to time. This was one of those times."

Amy nodded privately, beginning to get a sense of why the Doctor had wanted to meet this odd time-travelling flirt. _Trying to make me feel better, give me someone to talk to, are you? Thank you, Doctor._

The Doctor looked around the small, modestly furnished living room. "So I'm guessing this is her house?"

"Yep."

"Always playing the knight in shining armour, you."

"Says the man who saves young, attractive women from certain death on a weekly basis." Another giggle from Amy, another groan from the Doctor.

"I'd like to meet this girl. Can I?"

"Of course. She's upstairs now. I'll take you to her – having three strangers barge into her room would probably be a bit much, so we'll have a chat then come back down together."

"Alright. You two won't destroy the house in the interim? That means you, Pond."

An angry pout and a death glare was all the response he needed. He smiled, his eyes twinkling with amusement as he rose from the armchair.

* * *

><p>"Alright, you can spit it out now."<p>

The Doctor started, pausing at the base of the stairs at the end of a hallway. "Sorry, what?"

"Amy. What's the deal? Come on, Doctor, I'm not gonna miss those looks you were giving her."

"Nothing! I swear, absolutely nothing. There is _nothing_ going on between us," he replied, much too fast and much too vehemently.

Jack's grin was as wide as an ocean. "That's not what I meant, although it's interesting that you jumped to that conclusion so quickly. But when I was talking about living a normal human life, she was about to say something, and you stopped her. So...?"

The Doctor sighed, relieved at being off the more uncomfortable of the two hooks. He began to ascend the staircase again. "Yes, she isn't human, although she used to be."

"Lemme guess. Time Lord?"

The Doctor froze mid-step, his eyes wide as plates. "How the hell did you guess that?"

"You do realise how many vortex manipulator trips I've made, right? Extended exposure to the Time Vortex and all that, I've picked up one or two of the more minor party tricks. Oh, being stuck on the outside of the TARDIS for trillions of years' worth of time travel helps."

"Right, right." The Doctor replied, relieved that his initial concern had been unfounded. One of his worst fears (_those sure are starting to rack up, aren't they?_) is that Amy's identity would lead her to the same kind of unwanted attention he himself drew – the thought of the person now most important to him going through even a fraction of what he had endured chilled him to the bone. But for now she was safe, relatively speaking – it wasn't common knowledge that there were two Time Lords running around now. Not yet, anyway

"I'm guessing that's why you came to see me? To keep an eye on her?"

"Partially." He grabbed the former Time Agent's arm, drawing his gaze level with his. "I need you to distract her."

"Sorry, what? Distract her with what?"

"Oh, just be yourself. That'll do fine."

"Sure, I can do that, but – why? What are _you_ doing that requires me to distract her?" he asked, suspicion in his voice.

"It's a long story." He moved to pass the immortal, but Jack stopped him.

"No, not this time, Doctor. If you want me to do a favour for you, I'm gonna need to know the details. I'm not gonna take this 'rule number one' bullshit, yeah? Not after the 456."

The Time Lord looked carefully into his eyes, and was surprised to see the intensity of the pain and guilt reflected in them – pain and guilt that matched his own.

"Fine. OK. How much do you know about Time Lord psychic abilities?"

"A bit. I know you can share thoughts and emotions through touch, and sense other people emotions. Hypnosis and subtle mind control – that sort of stuff. The kind of stuff Saxon was pulling, I guess."

"That's what the Master and I am capable of, yes, but the same rules don't apply to Amelia Pond."

"What do you mean?"

He hesitated. "Okay. What I tell you now is to be repeated to _no one._ _Ever._ Do you understand me, Jack Harkness?" His eyes, crystalline-blue, shone with the import of his words, giving Jack a timely reminder of what precisely this man was capable of beneath his bubbly, eccentric exterior.

"Absolutely crystal clear, Doctor."

"Good." The Doctor breathed and glanced briefly at the end of the other end of the hallway from which they had come, making sure Amy and Rory weren't surreptitiously listening in.

"About ten days ago I felt this huge psychic impulse. Stronger than anything I've felt in my life."

"From Amy?"

"Yes."

"What was it?"

"Pure fear. As primal an instinct as they come."

"What caused it?"

"That's the thing – I don't know. I was about twenty billion miles away."

Jack breathed. "So you're saying she's not just a Time Lord, but a Time Lord with ridiculous amounts of psychic potential."

"Ridiculous doesn't quite cut it. This is big, Jack. Even assuming she's capable of that – a huge assumption to make before the fact – to emphathize telepathically over such a huge distance should've taken a hell of a lot out of her. I did something similar once – although it was time and not space in the way there – and I had to go into a temporary coma to manage it. She did it conscious and with no ill-effects – as of ten minutes later, anyway."

"How do you know that?"

"Now _that_ is a long story. Involves six-fingered people and a lot of sneaking around starship corridors. But trust me on this one – she managed to do what hardly any Time Lords in history could have managed."

"So is she in control of this? I mean, that sort of power... I ran into a telepathy pendant once when I was working with Torchwood, and even that was way too powerful an object to be left unchecked. I've heard bad stories about rogue telepaths loose on worlds, mass indoctrination, dozens of people turned into braindead coma patients and the like. That sounds like peanuts compared to the pretty Scottish girl you've picked up there."

"Mostly. I don't think she was last week when the impulse happened. We're just lucky she didn't channel that power and inadvertently employed mass hypnosis or something. Although it would have made things simpler, I admit."

Jack breathed deep. "Bloody hell. You sure she's in control right now? I don't really feel like turning into some Amy-drone. Or worse."

"Absolutely sure. She spent the last three days locked in the library teaching herself how."

"What do you reckon she's capable of?"

"Don't know. Got my theories, though. Off-the-scale ability to block psychic intrusion, which I guess is handy. Long-range telepathic communication if she so chooses, also handy. Memory and sense-sharing, the usuals. Beyond that... it gets murky. Localised psychic domination, definitely. Larger-scale hypnotic ability, possibly."

"Could she, erm..."

"Kill?" The Doctor asked suddenly, harshly. "Yes. Maybe. I'm not sure. A psychic attack launched in the right way at an mind without strong barriers, using an impulse of sufficient strength, overloading the central cortex and causing a neurotransmitter flood... perhaps. Perhaps. I'm not sure. I really would rather not find out."

"Why aren't you sure about this? You're supposed to be the expert on these things. A girl who can _possibly_ kill or cripple people just by thinking – that's pretty serious stuff to be unsure about."

"Because she hasn't shown all her cards yet. The _really_ scary thing is that I'm almost certain she's deliberately not using her full potential. There's parts of her own mind – big parts – that she's locked away for some reason. Who knows what she could become if she gets access to those?

"But if she's in control... we're fine, right?"

"She's in control _right now_. My theory is that those memories and other parts of her mind she's suppressing deliberately – sometimes she loses control of it, and the built-up stress bursts out. The impulse was an example, but I doubt it will be the last. Or the strongest."

"Does she know about this? About what she's capable of?"

"I think so. And I suspect it scares her even more than it scares me, because she alone really knows what could happen if she loses it. Only she knows her own mind."

"So why is she still locking up these memories, assuming you're right? Sounds like a absurdly dangerous idea to me."

"That's what I intend to find out."

Jack paused. "OK. What do you need from me?"

"I told you. A distraction."

"Distraction from – oh." Jack swallowed in realisation of what he was about to sign up to be an accomplice for. "Are you absolutely sure this is the right way to go about things? Pretty big invasion of privacy, Doctor. And what about her psychic barriers?"

"She's powerful, far more so than me, but she's inexperienced. A telepath of sufficient skill – like me – can still find a way in for the time being."

"Couldn't you just ask her instead?"

"Tried. Failed."

"She doesn't trust you? She's half in love with you for goodness' sake!"

"Don't even joke."

"Who says I'm joking? The way she looks at you-"

"I don't have any other choice, Jack," he cut him off firmly, sidestepping the point. "I need to find out why she's bottling all these things up. What she's bottling up. Otherwise they'll come rushing out like a burst water dam when she gets angry and, well, who knows what'll happen then? How many innocent people could find themselves neurologically damaged or dead because of it? I can't let that happen. For her sake. At the very least I need to know how much of her mind she's imprisoned like this, so I have an idea of what to expect if the worst comes to worst."

Jack stood and contemplated the Time Lord for a moment, his piercing gaze soaking up every piece of information it could from the aged lines on the Doctor's young face. "Alright," he said slowly. "But I hope to hell you know what you're doing."

"So do I."

* * *

><p><strong>In case it isn't blatantly obvious, Miracle Day and surrounding events do not occur in any shape or form.<strong>


	15. Fireplace Conversations

**Another talky-talky chapter - hope people don't mind **(there's a little more to come yet)**. To make up for it, in this chapter I introduce a new and reasonably important character, have two fairly crucial character scenes, one _big_ twist (I hope), and throw in a dash of intrigue at the end. I'd say I'm pulling my weight.  
><strong>

**As always, review!  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"<em>So as soon as the TARDIS is refuelled, we go, yeah?"<br>"No. There are Time Lords here. I heard them and they need me."  
>"You told me about your people and you told me what they did."<br>"Yes, but if they're like the Corsair, they're good, I can save them!"  
>"Then tell them you destroyed the others?"<br>"I can explain. Tell them why I had to."  
>"You want to be forgiven."<br>(beat)  
>"Don't we all?"<br>(a pause and a nod)  
>"What do you need from me?"<em>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 15. Fireplace Conversations: 23-24 October 2010<strong>

The blonde-haired girl awoke with a start to find two people in her room. One the familiar form of Jack Harkness, the other a man she had never seen before, but she had an odd feeling she vaguely recognised.

"Er – hello," she murmured timidly, pulling the white covers defensively up her chest.

"It's OK, Katherine. He's a friend, that's all. He can help keep you safe."

She looked at the man in the bow-tie and tweed jacket. His hands rolled over each other twitchily in a manner that reminded her of a hyperactive ten-year-old, but there was a wise, understanding smile on his face. _Why do I recognise this man..._

"Hello there. I'm the Doctor. I'm here to help."

She gasped. _The Doctor? The actual Doctor? Like, the Doctor that I kept making fun of at school?_ She reached her hand out nervously and shook it. "I'm Katherine. Katherine Broad."

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Broad. Jack tells me you had a run in with some not-very-nice people the other day. Could you tell me about them?"

"Not much. They wore black, so I had no idea who they were. I thought they were going to... you know." She blushed, unable to say the words. "But they kept asking me about Time Lords. I've no idea why, I've never heard of anything like it. Who were they, escaped mental patients?"

"I wish. But don't worry, I can help sort this out. They won't be asking much longer, don't worry about that. Mind if you come downstairs? There's some friends I'd like you to meet, my, erm, team."

"A – alright," she acquiesced, not really in a position to argue. As the pair moved back through the doorway, she suddenly found herself blurting out the question that had been digging into her mind since she'd seen the enigmatic bow-tie wearing man.

"Are you – are you _the_ Doctor? As in the _actual_ Doctor? With a big blue time machine?"

He turned around slowly, his face riddled with surprise. "The one and only. How did you know me?"

"Someone I knew-" she couldn't possibly use the word _friend "-_talked about you a lot. I didn't believe her though, thought she was crazy. Turns out I was wrong."

The Doctor chuckled. "Nothing wrong with being crazy, Katherine. You'll learn that in time. Out of curiosity, who was this friend of yours?"

"Well, she wasn't really a friend, but I knew her. I haven't seen her in years. Her name's Amy Pond."

Instantly, the Doctor's face brightened and he skipped over to her, dragging her to her feet and pulling her out of the room, ignoring the shocked expression on Jack's face.

"Well, no time to lose! Come along, Katherine Broad, there's someone I'd like you to meet."

* * *

><p>Amy was tapping her foot on the floor again, a sign Rory recognised instantly as a warning that her unusually short patience was reaching its limits.<p>

"Where is he? What's he doing?"

"Come on Amy, relax. It's only been fifteen minutes or so, he might need to convince Jack's friend to come down."

Amy wasn't buying it. "He's up to something. I know he is. I'm going to go get him." She placed both her hands on the armrests of the chair and was about to propel herself upright when the Doctor burst into the room dragging a petite blonde girl behind her, a breathless Jack following in their wake.

"Amy! I believe you might know – oh." He stopped when he registered the expression on Amy's face. She had shot bolt upright, stiff as a board. Her hands were balled into fists and she was shaking slightly. Her radiant emerald eyes were fixed on the girl who was starting to cower behind the Doctor. Waves of shock and hatred rolled off her face and through the psychic field, crashing into the Doctor's mind in thick, heavy bursts.

"What – the hell _– _is _SHE _doing here?**"**

* * *

><p><em>What's the old saying?<em> Jack asked himself. _Tension so thick you could cut the air with a knife? Think that applies right about now._

The Doctor, as usual, took it upon himself to be the icebreaker. "Er, yes. Well. Amy, Katherine Broad is the girl who Jacked saved. Katherine, well, erm, you already know Amy and Rory, obviously. I was hoping you'd be friends but clearly... not." He cleared his throat lamely.

Amy seemed to have calmed, the shock wearing off, but the contempt hadn't left her eyes. "Broad. Found out I was right all along, did you?"

The blonde met the red-head's drilling gaze stubbornly, refusing to be cowed. _All coming back to bite you now, isn't it?_ Shame and regret, thick and hot, rose up her throat as the memories assaulted her conscience, but she didn't let it show on her face.

Rory laid his hand on Amy's rod-stiff arm. "Come on, Amy. That was years ago now, even longer for her. I'm sure she feels bad about it now."

She snorted viciously. "Easy for you to say."

The Doctor moved forward, away from Katherine, and laid his hand on the Time Lady's cheek. "Amelia, people change. People do stupid things. You do stupid things, I do stupid things. Don't become bitter and angry over them. That's not you. I _know_ it isn't you."

Their eyes locked, the gentle blue trying to break through the thick crust of suspicion and bitterness in the green. Eventually his imploring gaze won out, and she relaxed slightly.

"OK. OK. I'll try. But I can't guarantee anything more." She shot Katherine another venomous look, filled with mistrust.

"Pond, if it helps at all, I'm sorry. For everything," the blonde said, speaking for the first time since entering the room.

"Don't call me Pond, please."

* * *

><p>They decided, with Katherine's permission, to stay at her house overnight before going back to the TARDIS – it clearly wouldn't be safe for Katherine to remain in London whilst time-travelling mobsters were after her. Not until the Doctor dealt with them, anyway. Amy had grumbled about this plan, but eventually relented when the Doctor assured her that Katherine would most definitely not be sharing her room.<p>

Jack found the whole exchange fascinating – especially how generous Katherine was being, given that she _was_ the owner of the house and giving some serious leeway to some less than gracious guests (_well that's not quite fair, _Jack thought, _it's mostly just Amy_). He surmised that she felt she had a lot of making up to do. _Poor girl. Although a catfight between these two ladies would be great fun to watch... so long as Amy doesn't cheat, and force her to do cartwheels or something._

Katherine quickly left upstairs to return to bed, Jack following to the spare room (despite his own leanings and private urges, taking advantage of a vulnerable woman was something Jack most definitely wouldn't be doing). Rory slept on the couch, leaving Amy and the Doctor in the armchairs in front of the slowly dying fire. Neither particularly felt like going to sleep tonight, having been well rested in the doldrums of their week-long break from adventuring.

"I'm sorry for dragging Miss Broad into the room like that before you were prepared. I didn't stop and consider that you two might not be the best of buddies."

Amy's face remained neutral. "All roses and sunshine in your world, isn't it, Doctor?"

He opened his mouth to retort, indignant, but she smiled and continued before he could reply. "Don't worry about it. Besides, I wouldn't want you any other way."

He blinked, totally at a loss as to how to respond. He decided to change the subject as usual. "You'll be OK with her on the TARDIS? I realise it won't be all giggles, but we can't leave her here."

"I'll manage. I probably should go and apologise to her for being such an arse. It is her house after all. Although it's not like she ever did the same for me."

He was about to reply but again she cut him off. "Yeah, yeah, two wrongs don't make a right, I know. It's just... difficult."

"I understand. You can just be pretty scary when you're angry, that's all."

"Don't worry, I'm not about to mind-control you or melt your brain or anything like that. All under lock and key."

"Ah, so all that reading _did_ come in handy, then."

"I try." She laughed, but then her expression darkened. "But it scares me too, Doctor. Sometimes, I don't know, I just get so _mad_ and then... and then... I don't know what I'm capable of. What I might do to people. Like on that ship. You felt it, right? That day. I had a gun that day, but I didn't need one. Especially given what I know now. If I really wanted to kill him, if I truly meant to, I could have done it without anything at all. Made him point a gun at himself and blow his own brains out, or something. Somehow. And god I _wanted_ to. That freaks the hell out of me, Doctor. That if I become angry, I can kill people just by _thinking._ What if I become that angry with Rory for some reason? With you?"

She buried her face in her hands, unable to contemplate the possibility.

The Doctor reached across to clasp one of her wrists. "My Amelia Pond. Just remember... whatever happens, however dark it gets, however scared or angry you become, we're here for you. And you'll be fine. Always fine."

A ghost of a smile flickered on her face. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. So long as I've got Rory and you, I'll be OK. My boys will be there for me. As it's been my whole life. Thank you for that."

He squeezed her wrist, smiling softly, and released it, leaning back in his chair.

* * *

><p>Hours passed in silence, with no sound in the room but Rory's quiet breathing from the couch and the crackling of the orange-yellow flames flickering in the fireplace. The Doctor was in the early stages of drifting off when Amy's voice brought him back to full consciousness.<p>

"What were they like? Before... the end."

"Sorry, Amy? Who?"

"Your people – _my_ people. You told me about them and you told me what they did... but what were they like before that?"

"Oh." The question took him by surprise. "At their peak, they were great. The greatest. They were gods but the non-interference policy meant that they rarely used their power. They just watched."

"Except when there were children crying?"

He smiled, remembering back to his words on Amy's first adventure with him. Little were they aware of what was to come. "Except that." He paused. "Out of curiosity, why d'you ask?"

Amy stared thoughtfully at the dying flames. "I was just thinking... I just thought that, you know, it'd be handy to know what they were like. What I might be like."

He sensed the concern buried between her words. "Amelia Pond, it's like I told you. You're a Time Lady, yes, and no longer human, but you're still _you_. You'll always be."

She sighed. "I guess so. It's just thrown me a bit, y'know, not being human any more. I thought I was gonna just travel with you, marry Rory one day and... well, to be honest, I didn't really plan beyond that. Maybe go to university, or get a job, or something. But that's all gone now, isn't it? I have to help protect the universe now, like you."

"You don't have to. If you want to go back to Earth and live a normal life with Rory, all you have to do is ask." Despite his best efforts, he couldn't avoid his voice becoming a flat monotone, tinged with bitterness. He knew full well that if Amy ever left the TARDIS, the resulting _emptiness_ would probably crush his spirit.

Amy's eyes flashed star-bright. "_No,_ Doctor. You think I'm really that selfish?"

The Doctor's eyes widened. "Amy, I – I mean – that's not what I meant, but-"

"I know full well what you meant." She snapped. "You really think that I can just go live a happy, normal life, knowing that I'm one of only _two_ Time Lords in existence? In the whole universe? Go and do the domestic shtick whilst you you stick your neck out, alone, saving billions of people countless times over, and be happy knowing what I am? What I should be? What I'm _meant_ to be?"

"You were never meant to be this. You were always meant to be Amy Pond from Leadworth."

"But I'm not any more, am I? Play with the hand you've dealt, that's what I learnt. Life tells me that 'you're now one of the most powerful people in the universe' and you just expect me to have... have kids and a happy little family, and just _exist_?"

"And so _this_ is your alternative?" The Doctor's temper was beginning to rise too.

"_Yes._"

"But you're not supposed to be here! You were never-"

"Don't you dare. Don't you _dare_ even think that. Because I'm not leaving the TARDIS, and I'm not leaving you. Ever. Do you understand me?"

"Amelia-"

"_**Do. You. Un-der-stand. Me?"**_ Her voice was a low, steely hiss, a flame lit within her emerald eyes.

"Amy, I understand, I really do, but this kind of lifestyle – it's dangerous, more than you can ever imagine. And even if – even if you somehow do survive, you have no idea of what's involved. No idea at all."

"_**Even for you that's arrogant. You think you're the only one who knows pain? With scars in their past? Skeletons in their closet?" **_Her face softened and her voice became gentler, losing its harsh edge. "I really appreciate the concern. Really. But this is _my_ choice, and nothing and no one will _ever_ change my mind."

"And if you get killed? How am _I_ supposed to feel about that? You're important to me, Amelia Pond, more important that you could ever imagine." It was an affirmation, a statement of wrought of unbreakable, iron-clad conviction.

"Then sleep at night knowing that I died doing what I wanted. What I loved. How many people can claim to have seen what I've seen? What I've done? What I'm going to do? A year of this is better than a millennia stuck on earth."The fervour and intensity of his words wasn't lost on her, but she set it aside for the present. There was a burning sensation inside her she hadn't felt before, a craving that demanded satisfaction, a confirmation of her true identity. She didn't know why, but she just _knew_ that this was who she was, and damn if anyone was going to question her.

He sighed in frustration and flopped his head back on the top of the armchair, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "Why are you doing this, Amelia? I mean, I get it, but – _why?_ Why subject yourself to all that pain? I was doing a fine job of saving the universe on my own, thanks."

"Because you shouldn't. Not alone. I've been through the TARDIS records. I've seen all those people you've travelled with – most of them girls, many of them hot, I noticed. Sly dog." She smirked roguishly and paused, before returning to seriousness. "You've always needed someone else. But you've always borne the pain and suffering yourself. Now you don't have to. I'm doing this for you as much as anything else."

He sat in silence for a minute, eyes closed, his hearts shredded in a melting pot of emotion. Gratitude at the lengths she was going to help him, help everyone, guilty joy that his Pond wasn't going anywhere, ever (and he knew she meant it), frustration at her obduracy, overwhelming concern for her welfare, some other strange feeling in his stomach that he couldn't quite pin down. Eventually, his voice returned, soft, tired. "Thank you. From the bottom of my hearts. But-"

"Doctor," she cut him off. "Shut up. And don't apologise. Never, ever apologise."

And he shut up. For a moment.

"But what about Rory? You're still going to marry him, right?"

No answer.

"Amy..." A warning note entered his tone.

"Look, I need to think about it, alright? I just need to... need to... weigh up my options. On my own. OK?"

She glanced around the chair at her fiancée, lying peacefully beneath the blankets and the couch. His snores had died down, and Amy was struck by his tranquillity, the beauty, his... _humanity. Something I can never have. Will never have. Will never be able to give you... Rory, I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry._

She'd lied to the Doctor. She'd made her decision several days ago, in the library, when she'd learnt what she was capable of. She had instantly sworn then and there that there was no way she could subject the man she loved, the one who had saved her from oblivion and had held her hand every moment of her life since the age of eight, to that sort of threat. Before that point, her misgivings had swirled in the corners of her mind, in places where she could keep them out, but that sickening moment of realisation had brought all the walls crashing down.

_He deserves the world. Everything. Anything. And he definitely deserves better than a murderer and an alien who could kill him just like that if she got sufficiently pissed off_.

She didn't know when she'd break the news – maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month, maybe in a year. But not yet. It would be another little secret for her to keep, but she was good at keeping secrets. She had to be. Right now, she was just thankful for his blissful sleep, free from pain, free from burdens, unaware of the life-changing conversation that had just taken place.

But, unbeknownst to her, she was wrong. He wasn't sleeping at all. He was just pretending to, his mind racing and his single heart beating frantically.

He had heard every single word.

* * *

><p><em>The flags flutter proudly in the midsummer daylight, rustling softly in the northerly breeze. They stand atop the battlements of the city walls, displaying their colours for all the world to see. The majority are a vibrant crimson, interspersed with a smattering of earthly grass-green and deep blue. The division of the flags between the three colours changes on an almost daily basis,and the citizens of the city amuse themselves by tracking the changes in the numbers.<em>

_The Queen gazes over the city from her castle wall, arrogant, fearsome, watching the small folk mill about, doing their daily business. Shopping. Gossiping. Busying themselves with the vagaries of life. She smiles at the scene, knowing that they could live happily because of her labours. For the walls she had built were strong. Stronger than any other walls in the world. No invader had ever breached these walls. No invader ever would._

_It was not invaders the Queen fears, however. It is what is inside the White Room. No one dares go near the White Room, for they know that if the White Room is ever opened, the city will fall, the terror within unleashed upon its citizens. The legions of enemies around the city all seek one thing: they seek to open the room. Everyone knows that. The White Room is the key to the city's power, and it must be protected. So the citizens, if called, work on the wall as their ultimate duty to their city and their Queen. The Room must never be opened._

_A messenger exits from the golden doors behind and falls to his knees in a gesture of supplication. "Your Highness, the scouts have returned."_

_She turns and inspects the young man magisterially. "And what did they find?"_

"_Tunnels, your Highness. Of a very clever and subtle nature, more intricate and devious than any we have ever encountered."_

_She considers this development carefully. "I wonder if it's really our enemies doing this. Because this isn't the first time. And they don't seem to be targeting the Room, like normal."_

"_Enemy or friend, your Highness, we cannot afford anything to breach the walls. A single flaw in their integrity-"_

"_Threatens the whole wall. And threatens the barriers of the Room. I know." She draws herself up to her full height and nods curtly. "You know the drill. Destroy the tunnels and strengthen the walls at once."_

"_It shall be done, your Highness."_

_She turns back to the turquoise-blue sky, her eyes clear and free from doubt, for there is no place for misgivings. The Room must never be opened._

* * *

><p><strong>So... any ideas on what that last scene might be?<strong>


	16. Don't Look Back

**Yep, change of labelling. See my profile if you already didn't know. Sorry, Rory/Amy fans, it just wouldn't have worked.**

**There's a line some people might recognise from Utopia at the end of this chapter. Its usage is deliberate.**

**Big rating reminder on this chapter.**

**Leave a review! Need to know people are still reading this.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>Love is a decision - not an emotion.<br>~ _Anon_  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 16. Don't Look Back – 24 October 2010<strong>

_She rifles through the mangled remains of the house, desperately searching for what she needs. What she wants. What she's always wanted. She ignores the splinters in her hands, the fierce heat of the flames rising in the ruins. She doesn't care about them, she's already destroyed everything she loves, everything she's known. What's a little more pain amongst the multitude of daggers slicing through her hearts? _

_Aunt Sharon, left permanently comatose when she refused one too many times to acknowledge what had happened._

_Leadworth destroyed by the hands of its own inhabitants, because she decided one day that she hated the little village, had enough of everything about it._

_Rory Williams, dead, killed instantly at the crest of an argument over why she couldn't just move on and live her life, like a normal person._

_Amelia Pond's pride, loneliness and anger, laid bare for all the world to see._

_She should never, ever have come back here. Now, she's made her decision, she knows what she needs to do. What she should have done the moment she left the TARDIS doors and heard that whirring sound for the last time. That sound that had haunted her every moment since._

_She lifts one burning piece of wood off the ruins, and spots it. There. That last flicker of something good, something better, something magical. What she should have been all along._

_A little blue wooden box._

_She grabs it with her shaking, singed hands, hugging it to her chest. She closes her eyes, tears streaming down her cheeks._

_It's time._

"_I'm sorry," she whispers, to Aunt Sharon, to Rory, to all the lives she's ruined and destroyed in her selfishness. To herself. Above all, to the mad, raggedy man that she should have never have left all those years ago._

_She lets go off the box with one hand and grips the cold metal. She raises the pistol to her temple, and squeezes the trigger with her index finger._

* * *

><p>Amy awoke, gasping.<p>

_Jesus. What the hell was that?_

She noticed the unpleasant jolt of brilliant sunshine streaming right into her eyes. Averting them groggily, she gingerly picked herself off the chair.

_At least I'm alive._ _Not shooting myself in the head._

She shook her head. _Just a nightmare, that's all. I've had worse. And now after yesterday, I know that that's definitely what WON'T be happening. Right. So forget that._

Her vision began to clear as she rubbed her eyes, and she looked around the room where she had fallen asleep. It was clearly mid-morning (_wow, how long did it take me to fall asleep?_) and both Rory and the Doctor had gone. She closed her eyes and concentrated, finding no sign of their presence in the wash of temporal and psychic noise that blanketed the city. She was moving towards the entrance hallway to find them when Jack sauntered into the room.

"Morning, sleepyhead. Didn't know Time Lords got so snoozy. I guess you need your beauty sleep more than most, though," he remarked, smirking rougishly.

Amy crossed her arms and tossed her slightly-tousled hair in mock indignation. "Time _Lady_ to you, Captain Harkness, and don't you forget it."

Jack's smirk only widened. "My apologies, Miss Pond. I'll endeavour to improve my standards in future."

Amy had to suppress a giggle at that. "You better. How'd you know, anyway? Did he tell you? I was hoping to do that myself." A disappointed pout.

"Nah, I worked it out pretty fast. You stick out, and _you_ aren't exactly subtle. Not that you should be with your looks."

Seemingly happy with this explanation, Amy walked over to the window, glancing unnecessarily at the leaf-covered street outside. "You seen Rory or the Doctor?"

"Yeah, they left to go get the TARDIS."

She raised an eyebrow. "Why'd Rory go?"

"Doctor mentioned something about fixing the Time Shield. Makes sense – the TARDIS isn't a fan of fixed points in time like immortal old me. Took us to the end of the universe to get try and get rid of me once. That's also why you might feel weird around me."

"Ah, right," Amy noted, understanding why she'd felt that bizarre unexplained instinct every time she'd been in the same room as Jack. "Hang on – Rory went with him because of that? Don't tell me he got him along to help."

Jack swallowed. "Now that you mention it – yeah. Yeah, I think he did."

Amy pursed her lips. "And did he care to explain _why_ he brought him, and didn't bother to wake me up? Or, as I suspect, did he say something about my flying skills?" she asked in a voice far too sweet to be natural. Jack had only just met the Scottish firebrand, but he knew danger when he saw it. He decided to go with honesty.

"I think he might have mentioned that, too. Something about a volcano."

Amy shook her head, her eyes narrowed. "I'll be having words with that man later, believe you me." She caught sight of Jack's military-stiff posture and wide-eyed expression and a snort of laughter escaped her. "Don't worry, I'm not about to take it out on _you, _handsome. Just make sure you're in a different room when I unload, though."

"Sounds like a plan. Anyway, I was just about to ask what you wanted for breakfast. You're not going to object to anything normal, right? Because that's all we've got here. And please don't ask me for fish fingers and custard, because I am _not_ making that again. Just way too out there for me."

"I'm an alien. Not weird," she retorted. "Normal'll do fine, thanks."

* * *

><p>Breakfast was indeed pleasantly normal – fried bacon, scambled eggs, tomatoes and orange juice. Jack, ever the gentleman, had insisted on making it himself despite Amy's protestations that she really could cook it herself. She wouldn't say it out loud, but she had to admit that he did a damn good job of it.<p>

"The Doctor must've been pleased to know he wasn't the last of his kind," he remarked, leaning back on the counter.

"Sort of. I think he felt sort of guilty for a bit, me losing my humanity."

Jack blinked. "Your humanity?"

Amy stopped eating for a moment. "Yeah, about that. I used to be human, up until a couple of months ago. But then something happened, and I turned into a Time Lord."

"Sounds like a long story in there somewhere."

"Yeah, pretty much."

"Look forward to hearing it. So how'd you know Katherine?" Jack asked as he leaned back on the counter, watching the Time Lady shovel down a piece of black-rimmed bacon.

"Broad?" Amy just about managed to keep the instinctive contempt out of the word. "Oh, we were schoolmates in Leadworth. She was in the year below mine."

Jack grinned. "I can tell you two aren't best buddies. I got a bit scared for her yesterday, given what you are and all – that would've been one hell of an unfair fight," he mused, recalling the tension in the air when Amy and Katherine had laid eyes on each other.

"Perceptive, aren't ya?"

"I try."

Amy smiled. She was very rapidly warming to the immortal despite her Time Lord instincts. "So do I. Yeah, I guess you could say that. I should probably get over it now – I'll actually give her credit for once and say that she seems to have."

Jack nodded. "There's one thing that's been bugging me about this, though. Especially given that she knew you once. Why'd they go after her for information about Time Lords?"

"Grab information on the Doctor, I guess."

"Yeah, but why her?"

"She knows about him. Or, at least, she knows _now_. She'd only heard about him before."

"But how?"

"Me, obviously. Did the Doctor tell you how he met?"

"No."

"Long story short, he crashed into my garden when I was seven. Something went wrong with the TARDIS and he had to rush off to fix it. He promised he'd be back in five minutes and take me to see the universe."

Jack saw immediately where this was heading. "And how long did he take to come back?"

"Twelve years. And then another two for good measure."

He flinched. "Ouch. That can't have been fun."

"You're tellin' me."

"So I'm guessing Katherine teased you about it? Bullied you for being a crazy Scottish girl with an imaginary friend who had a time machine?"

"Do I look like a girl who can be bullied?" She retorted, forcing another slice of tomato into her mouth.

"No," he admitted.

"Damn straight. But I worked out who my friends were quick sharp. And Broad was as far from that list as they came."

"That explains a lot," he remarked. "Even so... a hell of a lot of people know about the Doctor."

"And so they went after someone who just happened to know one of his companions. Bit of a coincidence, but hey, these things happen." She shrugged, not seeing the issue.

"And a Time Lady." Having lived as long as he had, Jack had long ceased believing in coincidences.

"So? I haven't exactly advertised myself to the world, you know."

"Not yet, anyway."

She stared at him, puzzled. "What do you mean – oh. Timey wimey, huh?"

"Something like that."

"So you reckon they're going after me?" A bolt of concern shot through Amy, but after last evening, she resolutely pushed it away. _This is the life I've chosen._ "Well, let them. I can take them."

Jack frowned. "Amy, I don't think you should be so blasé about this. I can see this scares the Doctor, and he doesn't get scared easily. He worries about you, you know." _And with good reason_, he thought, recalling what the Doctor had told him about the young ginger in front of him.

"He worries about me a lot. Too much. It's sweet of him, but it does get annoying from time to time."

"He has your best interests at heart, you know."

"That's what makes it sweet."

"Quite the couple, you two," he remarked, only mostly joking.

"Don't go playing matchmaker now," Amy warned him. "I'm engaged, in case you hadn't noticed."

"Duly noted." He hesitated before continuing. _No point continuing this charade. For her sake. _"When are you going to tell him?"

"Sorry, what?" Amy asked, taken aback. "Tell who what?"

"Rory. When are you going to tell him?" Amy just stared blankly at him, uncomprehending. "Amy, you know what I'm talking about. What you're planning to do."

Amy continued to stare for a few more seconds, then the penny dropped. Her eyes became circle-round, the knife and fork clattering from her trembling hands onto the plate. Her mouth fluttered open and closed. "How... how do you know about _that?" _She whispered.

He smiled sympathetically. "I've been around a _long_ time, Amy. I can tell. Don't worry, I'm not judging you or anything. It's natural – to you, he's the alien now. It makes sense that you'd, erm, go with your own."

Amy shook her head emphatically. "It's not like that. It _definitely_ isn't like that." Jack looked unconvinced. "Look, Jack, you're right, I am gonna call us off, but it's for Rory's sake. I'm doing this for him."

"But surely if you love him that much, you can get around it?"

She shook her head again. "You don't understand. How dangerous I am to him. How much I'll ruin his life if I try to live a normal life with him. It's the old saying – if you love them, let them go. That's what I'm doing. Otherwise I'll kill him. And myself, because I'll never be able to live with myself if – when – I do."

Jack gazed at the young Time Lady's vivid green eyes, searching them for any trace of a lie or a misdirection. There was none to be found – she genuinely believed what she'd just said. Even so... he couldn't possibly miss the way the two Time Lords interacted, even in the brief time he'd gotten to know Amy. The way that they seemed to be able to communicate with no more than a raised eyebrow and a glance. He decided that it would be best if he left it to them to work it out themselves. _They surely will. In time._

"Alright. I get it. So when are you going to tell him?"

Amy broke from his gaze, staring out the kitchen window. He could clearly see the anguish this decision had caused her. Was causing her. Would cause her when the time came. "When I'm ready."

He nodded, slowly. Relieved that the subject had been closed, Amy returned to her breakfast. "So where's Broad now? Taking one last stroll of the neighbourhood?" She asked, scooping up another forkful of scrambled egg.

Jack laughed. "Nah. I told her to stay indoors at all times."

"I doubt she's listening, to be honest. She's stubborn, you know. Like me, I guess."

"Yeah, well, it's for her own good."

Amy frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Way too dangerous, she'd almost certainly get ambushed without protection. Precept may be goons, but they're 50th century goons with vortex manipulators and someone nasty behind them – they'd track her down in a flash." He noticed Amy's frown hadn't dissipated, but had in fact deepened. She closed her eyes and placed her fingers on her temple. "Why? What is it, Amy?"

"Quiet." Jack knew an order when he was given one. Amy sat motionless for several seconds, plainly concentrating on something. _What's she doing? It's as if she's trying to do something with her psychic... oh. OH. That's not good. At all._

"Where is she, Amy? Tell me. Right now." He asked quietly, fear rising in his throat. _Oh please, please, please be nearby. Please._

The girl opened her eyes at last.

"Not here."

* * *

><p>Katherine marched down the street, wrapping the black coat around her petite body. A thousand random thoughts buzzed through her head like angry wasps. She was aware of Captain Jack's warning to her. Under no circumstances was she to leave the house.<p>

_Like I was gonna listen. When have I ever let people push me around? I'm not going far, anyway. Just one last stroll around the place where I live, see the sights one last time. That's all._

She'd been scarcely able to sleep the previous night. She was already shaken by the experience of being caught in a dark alley and threatened with things she didn't want to even contemplate by strange men who had blabbered about something she had no comprehension of. Then, just when things were taking a decided turn for the worse, she'd saved from certain death and worse by an equally strange man with what could only be laser guns. She wasn't so shaken by having her life put in danger, but the things they said they'd _do_ to her, had been _doing_ to her... she shuddered at both the memory and the thought.

Last night was the last straw. She'd been thrown utterly by the re-entrance of those three people into her life having. One whom she secretly quite liked, one of whom she'd sworn didn't exist and one who'd she'd hoped never to see again.

_Especially_ not in these circumstances. Guilt didn't come naturally to her, but boy, when it came, it made its presence felt, wrapping its cold hands around her throat and holding on for dear life.

_Life always comes back to bite you in the arse, eh? Turns out Mad Amelia Pond wasn't so mad after all. But she is angry_. Katherine knew what Amy Pond was like when she was angry. Especially after whatever had happened when Amy was fifteen – she'd turned from a girl whose rages and tantrums were moderately frightening but provided a consistent and reliable source of adrenaline rush for the group of school girls she'd been at the head of, to a girl that had put some of them in hospital. No, she didn't want to get on the wrong side of Amy Pond's temper right now. Especially now that she was going to have to _live_ with her.

_On a bigger-on-the-inside time machine. Yeah. Work that one out. I'd call Jack mad too, and he probably is, but he did save my life, so I guess I have to go along. _She had no idea what to expect. All of time and space... what the hell did that even mean?

So she'd decided to take a walk. Clear her mind. Steel herself for whatever curveball fate was about to throw her way next, what insane turn her life was going to take.

She continued her brisk walk down the street, not really knowing where she was going, engrossed in her own tattered thoughts. So much so that she bumped straight into a lamp post.

She swore softly, rubbing her head where it had made contact with the cold iron. She took the break in her train of thought as an opportunity to take one last look at the tranquility of St. John's Wood. _Such a beautiful place to live. Pity it's now filled with people who want to rape and kill me, and can teleport. Apparently._

The sunlight glinting off a street post caught her eye, and she glanced at it. She was surprised to see that it wasn't where she had expected to be at all – she'd gone about two streets further than she'd intended. _Oops. Didn't even notice. Probably should go back now._ She looked around for a shortcut and spotted a narrow alleyway between two terraced houses. _That'll do. Save me about ten minutes of walking._ She turned on the spot and headed over to the alleyway, briefly pausing to peek around the corner to glance within. It was empty. _Obviously. Don't be stupid. They're not gonna just wait in some alleyway for you. _She wrapped her coat back around her, pulling it tight, and moved down the darkened alleyway.

She was halfway to the other side when there was a sudden noise, akin to arcing electricity, and a small rush of air. She froze.

Out of nowhere, a person had appeared in the alleyway, right in front of her.

"Well, my pretty," the bald, dark-suited man said, a cruel, leering smile on his face, "you didn't _really_ think you could get away that easily, did you?"

_Oh shit._ She turned and sprinted as fast as she could in the other direction, but she'd barely made ten metres before another crackling noise rent the air and she ran headlong into another man, this one wearing a leather jacket, who forcefully spun her around and crushed her against him, pulling her into a dark cleft where they were out the sight of the street beyond. She tried to scream, but his other hand was clasped firmly over her mouth, and all she got out was a pathetic muffled moan.

"_So,_ Miss Broad," the first man drawled, an evil glint in his eye. "Shall we have our fun now, or shall you tell us about the Time Lords first?"

She closed her eyes, readying herself as best she could for the horrors about to befall her.

* * *

><p>Amy sprinted up the terrace-lined street, her eyes darting left and right for any sign of long strawberry-blonde hair. Six months with the Doctor had made her an adept runner, and she covered ground quickly, now onto the sixth street from Broad's house.<p>

_That idiot. That stupid bloody fool. She's gonna get herself killed all because she didn't listen. All she had to do was stay inside, but nooo, she's too bloody stubborn to even to that._

_Like you would have done any differently,_ a voice inside her retorted, but she ignored it.

Jack hadn't even needed to say anything. The moment they'd realised what had happened, they'd both raced out of the kitchen, Jack grabbing a pistol and Amy her sonic phone. They'd decided to split up, to try and cover as much ground as quickly as possible. This time, at least, the task was genuinely straightforward. Find Broad before time-travelling mobsters could. Get her home safe and sound. Yell at her.

Jack had briefly warned Amy about the potential dangers the Precept goons posed, but she shrugged them off. It'd take her a lot more than some mooks with guns to get in _her_ way right now, given how pissed off she was. She carefully placed barriers around the more unstable parts of her mind, not wanting her extreme irritation and anger that this lot would have a second shot at someone she knew – not someone she liked, but someone she knew nonetheless – to escape in some unpleasant way. She'd save Broad, no matter what was in her way. And then she'd give her a good old punch in the face for being such a moron.

Right now, though, she had to find her. She reached the end of the sixth street, having found no sign of her. _Damnit._ She wouldn't be able to sense her psychically until she was within shouting distance – she was very much human and hence had a very tepid psychic presence, and the temporal noise littering the city made it even harder.

She turned and sprinted into the seventh street from Broad's house, her head flipping from left to right as she desperately searched for any sign for the girl. She was almost at the end of the street and starting to lose hope that she'd find her at all when there was a sudden cry within her mind.

A little burst of terror.

_That wasn't me. That definitely wasn't me._

She skidded to a halt, turning on the spot to try and locate the source of the psychic cry for help. Another burst washed through her mind, stronger, emanating from a little alleyway on the side of the street about fifty feet behind her. She'd glanced within, but hadn't found anyone within. A small smile found its way onto her lips.

_Gotcha._

* * *

><p>"You got one more chance," the bald Precept goon snarled. "Tell us everything you know about the Time Lords or I promise we'll make you wish you were never born. We'll do that anyway, but you might live to tell the tale if you talk."<p>

"I swear," the blonde gasped, her hands trying vainly to dislodge the iron-like arm wedged under her chin, partially constricting her windpipe. "I have no idea what you're talking about. I don't have any idea what Time Lords are, who they are."

"Don't give us that crap. You know who they are. You knew them personally, knew them well. We know this."

"How the hell can I know Time Lords personally when I don't even know what they are?" she hissed, her natural temper flaring even at this dire juncture. The man's face screwed up, adopting a terrible expression bereft of all goodness. He took a step towards her.

"Wrong answer, Miss Broad."

"We should take her back to 50th-cent HQ. The drugs'll break through." The other Precept man said, the one with his arm around her throat.

"Oh, we will. But let's have some fun first, shall we?" A grin wrought of pure evil made its way onto his face, and he began to move towards the young girl. Her eyes widened and her breaths became ragged as she thrashed within the jacketed man's grip, throat too constricted to scream, trying to make one last, futile effort to escape.

The suited man had moved within touching distance, and was reaching his stubby, coarse fingers out when a lilting, Scottish-accented voice called out from behind them.

"Excuse me."

The three froze, the suited man turning to see a tall, pale red-headed girl standing behind them. Her black leather-clad arms were folded over her chest and her vivid green eyes blazed with the fury of a hundred supernovae.

"Hello, pretty lady." The suited man drawled. "I'd advise you to run away, unless you want to stick around for some fun," he added, his eyes raking greedily over ample amount of exposed leg beneath the short denim skirt.

The red-head curled her lip. "Somehow, I don't think so." She cocked her wrist, pointing a strange block-like device with some purple attachment to the end. Her thumb jammed down on a button and a buzzing noise filled the air. Without warning, sparks erupted from the devices on the wrists of both Precept men. They stared at them in identical gestures of astonishment – their manipulators had just died. Just like that. Burnt out. They were stuck, thirty centuries from their home.

The suited man looked up from his wrist to the red-headed girl, shaking, fury etched on his face. "You're going to pay for that, you stupid pathetic little human girl, after we've dealt with Broad."

The girl's smile widened. "Nope."

He narrowed his eyes. "_No?_"

"Not after you realise who I am."

He froze, taken aback. "How the hell am I meant to know who _you_ are, human girl?" He spat at her.

"Well, you're looking for Time Lords. And..." she unfolded her arms, spreading them wide in an open, seemingly welcoming gesture. "You found one."

The faces of both men paled instantaneously, as white as Katherine's had been five minutes beforehand. Their arms fell weakly to their side, their previous plans long forgotten. Katherine, now freed, stood transfixed, trying to process the scene that was taking place before her.

"You worked it out yet?" Amy's voice was gentle, soft, almost sing-song, but there was a hidden fury buried beneath that chilled Katherine to the bone. The two men nodded swiftly, trembling. "Do it," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Use my name."

"A-Amelia Pond."

Amy's smile broadened even more, the corners of her lips upturned in what would usually be described as a sweet smile. She refolded her arms, cocked her head and narrowed her eyes ever so slightly. It was quite possibly the most menacing gesture Katherine had ever seen.

"I'll make it simple," she intoned in that same silken, honey-sweet lilt, as a parent would when offering their youngest child a chocolate treat. "You let Broad go. You run. You don't look back and you _never_ come near here again."

The man in the suit swallowed. "Or?"

"Or I'll make you wish you were never born. _With my mind._"

They didn't look back.

* * *

><p><strong>So she saved Katherine, but that last bit won't please the Doctor when he hears about it, don't you think?<strong>


	17. The Unbreakable Wall

**In-between and shorter. Sorry. Something reasonably significant happens in this chapter but I won't fully explain what's happened/happening for a bit, and this is just a trigger for something a lot bigger.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 17. The Unbreakable Wall: 24 October – 3 November 2010<strong>

"Did you mean it?"

"Mean what?" Amy's tone was harsh and clipped. Saving Broad's life was one thing – being friendly with her, quite another.

"Whatever you were threatening to do back there to those guys. Could you really have done that?"

"Want to find out?"

Katherine swallowed. "Not really."

"Good answer."

They strode down the leafy terraced street, heading purposefully back towards Katherine's townhouse. Amy marched stiffly ahead, Katherine following a few places behind – she didn't want to get _too _close, not least for her own physical well-being. Amy had called Jack on her sonic phone, curtly informing him that yes, the Precept goons had found Broad, no, they hadn't hurt her, yes, they were coming back. She didn't elaborate on the details of the rescue – now that she was calmer, she was beginning to have considerable second thoughts on how the scene had played out.

_The Doctor wouldn't have done that... damn. _She'd actually threatened them. Threatened to kill them, or worse. The Doctor would never have done that. This is exactly what he was scared of. What _she_ was supposed to be scared of._ Control yourself, Amy Pond,_ she rebuked herself,_ or you'll hurt more than just a few mobsters._

She shook her head, clearing her mind. _It's not like I would have actually have done it. Just the threat of it was enough,_ she reasoned, resolutely refusing to acknowledge that it was completely beside the point. There'd be time to deal with that later, and time was one thing she had plenty of.

* * *

><p>Jack glanced nervously out the window, pacing the entrance hallway. His mind, although sharp and very much used to taking in the seemingly impossible, still hadn't <em>quite<em> caught up with the implications of Amy's nature. _Calm, Harkness. She'll be fine... it's the others that need to worry._

A four-beat marching of footsteps and the door was wrenched open, revealing a somewhat smug-looking Amy Pond and a shaken but very much alive and in one piece Kath behind her.

"Oh, thank God," he murmured, rushing over and pulling the blonde into his arms, pressing his lips against her forehead. Amy watched, eyebrows raised.

"Bit forward, aren't ya?"

Jack blushed slightly, but covered it by smirking at the red-head. "Speak for yourself, _Miss_ Pond," he retorted, extricating himself from the embrace.

She tossed her hair. "No idea what you mean." She instantly swore to herself never to tell him about the incident in her bedroom months ago. "So, the Doctor and Rory turn up yet?"

He looked at the grandfather clock on the ceiling. "Nah, but they should be back any-" A tick of the clock._ "-_second-" Another tick. A gentle breeze filling the room. A soft mechanical whirring, fading in and out. "-now." A police box, standing in the middle of the room, the lamp on the top scraping the ceiling slightly.

The doors opened.

"I trust you kids have been behaving yourselves?" the Doctor asked.

* * *

><p>Katherine stood a foot within the entrance, her mind having quite simply ceased operating.<p>

The Doctor skipped down from the central console to join her, having managed to successfully dodge Amy's furious tongue-lashing she had prepared for him for dragging Rory and not her off to help fly the TARDIS.

"Incredible, amazing, impossible, isn't it?"

"It's... it's..." she stammered, turning around slowly to take in the cavernous depths of the 'police box' interior.

"Bigger on the inside?"

"Well – yes."

The Doctor laughed and clapped his hands together, skipping back up to the central console and throwing his hands at a series of levers. "See, Rory? _That's_ how you're supposed to respond. Same goes for you, Pond. 'I'm in my nightie'", he intoned girlishly, scoffing. "I mean, really," he added, dodging the swing of the Scottish girl's arm.

The Doctor continued to roll around the TARDIS, flicking switches and spinning knobs. He came to rest in front of a silver-gold lever reminiscent of an aircraft throttle, lined with bright green lights. He yanked it downwards with all his strength and a tremor ran through the TARDIS, knocking all five slightly-off balance. Seemingly expecting it, Amy, Rory and Jack quickly righted themselves, but Katherine found herself on the floor next to the door. Amy suppressed a smirk.

"What the _hell _was that?" Katherine asked, having recovered managed to get her higher order thinking processes restarted – mostly.

"We've taken off, that's all. Nothing dangerous."

"Taken – _taken off?_ You mean we're leaving?"

"Yep!"

"But – but," a million thoughts washed through her mind. She had prepared herself to leave, but she hadn't expected it to be so sudden. At a minimum, she'd expected to at least have time to pack. There were things she _needed_ to have. "My clothes – and food, and – and stuff. I sort of need it."

"Oh, don't worry about it. Wardrobe has all the clothes you'll ever need, and then some, judging by the number of shirts Pond goes through. Pantry restocks itself every hour, but the fish fingers and custard is off-limits. Oh, and there's the choice of bathrooms there, there and there," he added, pointing to the various corridors that led away from the control room. He twirled back to the console panel, laughing gaily.

"All of time and space – everything that ever happened, everything that ever will. The universe is our backyard," he exulted, throwing his arms wide (and narrowly missing hitting Rory in the face). "So let's go out for playtime, shall we?" He moved to an old typewriter, and began hammering away at the keys. "And I know just the place to start."

No answer. He looked up at entrance. "Katherine?"

She'd gone. He frowned.

"Where'd she go?"

Jack had a lopsided, wry smirk on his face. This clearly wasn't how the Doctor had hoped the introduction would go. "Wardrobe."

The Doctor groaned. "Women," he muttered.

This time Amy didn't miss.

* * *

><p>His initial irritation and yet <em>another<em> TARDIS welcoming going awry aside, the Doctor quickly warmed to the blonde. Although clearly shaken by being kidnapped and having to be saved from imminent sexual assault and murder twice, she proved herself to be determined, resourceful, sharp-tongued and very, very sharp. Much like, the Doctor noted silently, a certain Scottish redhead.

He was thankful for this for her sake, because said Scottish redhead was finding the arrangement, although necessary, not to her liking at all, and didn't hesitate to show it. They still hadn't gone anywhere – first by agreement for a few days for both to recover (Amy's guilt over her murder was only just beginning to subside), but the Doctor quickly became bored.

Unfortunately, their break-from-adventure-by-agreement had become a break-from-adventure-by-force after the two firebrands had dismantled half the console room to use as missiles to hurl at each other during one particularly heated argument over heaven knew what – from the screamed curses, the Doctor gathered that neither was particular impressed with each other's intrusions on their private wardrobe sections. The damage from this particular tiff was _so_ severe that he had to let the TARDIS repair itself – and with people inside, this would happen the slow way.

So that was another week gone down the drain. It really was amazing how long that could can be even after nine or so centuries of life.

Still, he had things to do – a week confined with Amy (and others) in the TARDIS meant he had ample opportunity to pursue his other major task. Jack, it turned out, was a highly capable if not always happy associate, and his spyings – as much as he tried not to admit it, that's what they were – were much more fruitful than beforehand.

However, that wasn't saying much.

_Amelia, seven, sitting on her suitcase, waiting. Amelia, eight, colouring in a toy TARDIS. Amelia, nine, yelling at a psychiatrist. This is all not very useful – I already knew about all this, thanks. Yes, I screwed her up good and proper, no need to remind me._

He kept trying.

_Amy, ten, playing dress-up. Amy, eleven, yelling at a teacher, her face screwed up in fury. Amy, twelve, doing the same with another psychiatrist. Amy, thirteen, busy poring over history books, presumably for any sign of a police box. Amy, fourteen, running from Rory one lunchtime, tears pouring down her face – gee, that's rare. Not sure I want to know what happened there._

And that was it. The moment he tried to push into when she was fifteen, he got nothing. Nada. Just a blank, black, pile of zero. It was as if the year 2004 had been completely erased from her memory... but even that wouldn't be so complete. No, this was deliberate. Conscious. And extraordinarily powerful. The moment he hit that mental wall, he knew that the object of his search was sitting right on the other side. Right behind that immense, unbreachable barrier.

_Ha. I'm the Doctor. Nothing is unbreachable. You just have to put some effort into it._

He was even more determined to succeed once he saw what was there when he went around this impossible wall. Up until 2004, Amy was a strange, introverted and witty young girl – so basically as he knew her. 2005, however...

_Amy, doubled over, vomiting after having had far too much to drink one evening. Amy, dazed and in hospital, Rory holding her hand, as medics rush her inside a ward after a minor heroin overdose. _And it just got worse and worse. Eventually, the memories were so distressing, so painful even for the Doctor, that he simply couldn't see them. He left them well alone. Thankfully, by late 2005 she seemed to have more or less recovered, although he noted that she was going exclusively by the 'Amy' moniker now.

He was in no doubt. Whatever had broken Amelia Pond, whatever she was holding back, whatever had happened to put her mind in such a state that it now left everyone around her in terrible danger, happened when she was in fifteen.

So he kept trying.

_Right, so, usual way. Past the big first layer, then these little ones, then that nasty psychic feedback loop she has set up, and through the randomized psychic dislocation thing she has going – nice trick, that one, Dulkios knew what he was doing when he wrote that – and under this wall, and yes. We're in._

He felt the wash of random memories, thoughts, and emotions wash over and caress his presence as he flitted through her mind. He took care to avoid contact that wasn't blatantly related to his search – he was well aware he shouldn't be here at all. _Got a job to do_, he firmly told himself.

Through the usual scar-crusting of mistrust, pain and regret she held in the deepest, darkest corners of her mind – a great deal of it his own fault, he reminded himself – and there it was. That immense psychic edifice, that extraordinary barrier closing off that huge chunk of her mind.

_Okedoke. Time to get to work_.

To an external viewer, the whole episode would have taken just a second or two. But within the Doctor's probing mind, it felt like hours' worth of exertion as he probed, he watched, he felt, he manipulated, he poked, he searched. Any sign of a weakness, any sign of a break in the unbreakable wall.

He'd been working stealthily for the psychic equivalent of three hours, and was about to give up when a section of the wall responded differently to his psychic touch. He tried again. Yes, there was definitely something different about this bit.

_Hello. What's this. Looks like a weak point... as if the barrier has corroded here – from the inside? Looks as if whatever's in there is trying to get out... oooh, that's not good. That's very much not good at all. The wall is disintegrating from the inside out._

He hesitated. _I can break through here. But I'll be damaging the integrity of whole wall... and whatever's in here really is escaping this mind prison on its own, I could be irreversibly accelerating the process. But it's going to get out anyway... in time. _

His resolve hardened. _I need to do this. I need to know what's behind all this. What's making her so unstable. So dangerous._ He steeled himself, and prepared a psychic jab, small but spear-like, to penetrate the weak spot. He tensed his mind, and pushed.

It crumbled on the first attempt, leaving a tiny, almost indiscernible hole in the wall. A little gap through which one could have a little peek. He flitted inside... and found himself assaulted by visions of a single colour.

White.

Pure, clean white. Nothing but white. No sound, no smell, no feeling – just white.

_What the...? Land of fiction? No, impossible, we've never been there, clearly. What could this possibly-_

"Doctor! You awake?"

He jerked upright as if a thousand volts of electricity had gone from head to toe. He slammed shut all his psychic barriers, terminating the connection to the innermost parts of Amy's psyche. "Yes! No! Maybe! Sorry, what? Drifted off. Wondering when the TARDIS would be ready."

Amy rolled her eyes. "Jack here reckons the red skirts go with my hair. But I like the denim. What do you reckon?"

He frowned. _She's asking me for... fashion advice?_ "I dunno. They're all skirts, aren't they? Ow!"

"That's for being a useless git." Amy snapped, her lip curling.

"Right. Well, I'll try not to be one next time," he muttered, rubbing his arm gingerly.

"You better. But anyway Jack, yeah, not convinced..."

The Doctor wasn't listening. He raised his psychic barriers once more, preparing to resume where he'd left off. He worked his way into her mind again... and found himself right against a repulsive, psychic wall, the likes of which he'd never witnessed before. Gingerly, he tried probing it – and a psychic impulse emanated from it, knocking him right back into his own mind with such strength that he physically staggered backwards.

Amy shot him a brief glance, then looked away, continuing to gossip merrily with Jack about flavours of ice cream. The Doctor continued to smile his usual, pleasant smile, but beneath his mind was a ceaseless, raging tempest of activity and his hearts were going at light-speed.

He hadn't failed to notice, in the instant before she'd looked away, how her eyes had flashed and narrowed ever so slightly, imperceptible to all but a Time Lord.

_She knows._

* * *

><p>"Kappamarine?" Amy asked, reading the ornate circular symbols on the screen. The TARDIS had rebuilt the console room at last.<p>

"Third planet in the Kappamarine system, to be precise," the Doctor rattled off, "Although everyone just calls it by the name of the star anyway. Quite a lovely place, glittering nano-sand beaches, the clearest purple sky you'll ever see, and the coffee is _excellent_."

"So it's like a holiday resort planet, yeah?" Amy and Katherine asked simultaneously. Amy shot the blonde a dirty look.

"Basically." He threw the lever back up, and another jolt ran through the floor. This time, Katherine didn't end up the floor, thanks to a last-second grabbing of the wall to steady herself. "Alright, we've landed. Come along, Pond – and Broad – and others – we've got holidaying to do!"

He latched onto Amy's wrist in the now-familiar way and the pair skipped towards the door. Katherine had already reached the door (she only had to move two steps), and had opened it ever so slightly for a peek.

"A holiday resort, yeah?" She inquired in a neutral tone, closing the door again. The Doctor frowned, sensing that something wasn't quite right. Jack also picked up on her sudden unease, and he felt instinctively for his hip, relaxing when he felt the familiar press of cold metal still there.

"Supposed to be, yes."

"Right." She grabbed both door handles and pulled the police box doors to their fullest width.

The Doctor's mouth opened, astonished, his eyes wide. His voice reduced to a mere whisper.

"Not... possible..."

* * *

><p><strong>Oh, and some stuff that I should have put in here but forgot to when I uploaded this (hey, it was 3am! Don't ask me what I was doing up at 3am). One. Remember, no River Song. So no Mels. So that Let's Kill Hitler scene doesn't happen. Two. Yes, I am filling in a lot of Amy's 'backstory' in this. Eventually, and it will not be entirely canonical. Three. That does include her going briefly off the deep end completely when she's 15-16. This happens for a reason, which should hopefully make sense in due course.<strong>


	18. Holiday Resort Planet

**I feel kind of bad for choosing lyrics from such an upbeat song to attach to this chapter (specifically referring to how it ends)... ah well. Maybe that's a sign that it'll all end happily ever after. Eventually. Not that I'm planning on ending this any time soon, of course.  
><strong>

****No prizes for guessing the villains of this piece. I'll give you a hint... they aren't new.****

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 18. Holiday Resort Planet: 3 November 2010<strong>

The five moved out of the TARDIS, sonics and guns at the ready. What had been sold to them as a resort planet now looked like the face of hell. The ground was black-brown for as far as the eye could see, and smoke rose from little piles of ash scattered across the landscape. In the distance, the outlines of a clearly artificial tower could be seen in the distance.

"So this is it, yeah? Right place? We didn't end up on some volcanic planet by mistake?" Amy inquired, inspecting the ruination that lay before them. Looking closer, Amy could see the burnt out-remains of a building complex, and the acrid smell of burnt plastic tinged the air. The sky, at least, was a brilliant, vibrant purple, as the Doctor had described, but Amy knew better than to take that as confirmation – she'd already seen a few.

"Yes, this is it," the Doctor replied absently. "This is definitely it. But it looks like someone's holiday went a bit too far..."

"You plan on making sense any time soon, Doctor?" Jack asked. He was keeping a close watch on Katherine, who was gazing on her surroundings in equal parts nervous trepidation, amazement that she was quite clearly on an alien world (the sky did it for her), and chilling fear at the calamity that had befallen the 'holiday resort planet'.

"Not really, no," he admitted.

"Well, I don't think we're alone, for sure. Getting a slight tingling feeling all over," Amy remarked.

"That's just radiation."

"Wait – like, _nuclear _radiation?"

"Just the one."

Katherine gasped. "That's sort of dangerous, isn't it?"

"Very dangerous right now. But-" He spun around, pulling out two small silver nailgun-like devices out of his bigger-on-the-inside pockets. Before they could react, Rory and Katherine found themselves jabbed in the forearm by two tiny needles. They yelped and jumped backwards, massaging their abused arms. "Not any more."

Amy eyed the silver device apprehensively. "Shouldn't the injection of that stuff you gave me at the Byzantium protect me?"

"Only lasts a few hours. But you've got something decidedly more permanent – Time Lord blood. It'd take a few million times more radiation to give you a belly-ache, let alone do any serious harm."

"Glad to see this gig has perks."

"Couldn't you have warned us beforehand?" Katherine demanded, still rubbing her arm furiously, as the Doctor pocketed the devices, bending down to examine a charred piece of wood.

"Probably. Slipped my mind a bit. Sorry. OK," He stood suddenly, pointing at the tower visible on the horizon. It was clearly well over a mile away. "I vote we head for that thing, whatever it is, and go snooping to see what happened to this place."

Rory glanced nervously at one blasted ash pile, spotting what looked suspiciously like the charred remains of an arm. He looked away, forcing down the retch that had crept up his throat. "Er – I really think we should, you know–"

"Come on, Rory," Amy shot back from up ahead – she was already walking forward with the Doctor, Jack and Katherine close behind. "Where's your sense of adventure?"

"Amy, I'm telling you, when you show up at a holiday resort planet and it turns out to be a-" He didn't manage to finish the sentence, however, as Amy had grabbed his arm, forcing him down the path and away from the TARDIS.

* * *

><p>They'd been walking for about half an hour, the Doctor, Amy, and (unwillingly) Rory leading, Jack and Katherine behind. Every now and then they stopped whilst the Doctor took some reading of one of the ash piles or a burnt out tree, muttering darkly to himself. At one point Amy had asked why they couldn't just hop the TARDIS the two miles or so to get straight to the odd tower, which they could now see was polished steel and about two hundred metres high.<p>

"Best not." The Doctor had replied simply. Amy frowned and chose not to press the matter further for once – she hadn't seen the Doctor this worried and uptight in a long, long time.

Katherine just walked along in silence. It had been quite a ride, she mused.

_First realising that I'd have to leave my home. Then being almost killed by a bunch of mobsters looking for some Time Lord. Then finding out that one of the kids I grew up with happens to be said Time Lord, and her scaring the living daylights out of them. Then... actually, I should find out about that. Now._

"What's a Time Lord?" she blurted out suddenly. Jack raised his eyebrows, surprised.

"What, Amy didn't tell you?"

"We're not exactly on gossiping terms here, Jack."

"Point taken. Well..." Jack paused, working out how to begin. "I'll start at the top. Time Lords isn't a title or anything – well, it used to be, but no one bothers to make that distinction nowadays. They're a species – alien, to you and me. Although apparently Amy _used_ to be human – I'd like to find out what happened there."

Katherine blinked several times. "Alien? Then why do they look human?"

"Good question. Whenever I've asked the Doctor, he's just said that they came first – my guess is a morphic field of some kind."

Katherine had no idea what that meant, so she decided to move the topic along. "So how many of them are there? A thousand, a million?"

"Two."

She started. _"Two?_"

"Two. And they're both right there," he added, nodding at the pair ahead, who he saw were all but holding hands despite the presence of Amy's fiancée right next to them. _Yeah, nothing special going on there. Right. You keep telling yourselves that, you two._

"Oh. What happened to the rest?"

"You don't want to know," the Doctor, whose keen hearing had picked up on their conversation, told her. "Let's just say it was a bad day."

"OK. So... how 'alien' are you? Like, what can you do that we humans can't?" Having made his contribution, the Doctor left Jack to explain.

"Well... I don't know it all," he admitted, "but for starters, they're both more or less immortal, although there are certain rules that govern how that works. They both have their own language which we can't understand, and they're both telepathic. Oh, and on that note..." He dropped his voice so that Amy couldn't hear him. "Try not to get on Amy's wrong side too much, yeah? It could end badly for all of us."

"Yeah, already worked that out, after how she dealt with those mobster blokes that were kidnapping me."

Without warning, Jack froze. "Sorry?" he asked, so quietly only she could hear. "What did you say?"

"Oh," Katherine began, taken somewhat aback by his mood change. "I was just saying that it's probably not a good idea to get on Amy's bad side, that's all, after what happened with those mobsters."

"Happened? What did she do?"

"Nothing, really. She just warned them to run away, or she'd do something to do with her mind. It sounded pretty nasty, but she didn't go into specifics. Why?" She frowned, noticing Jack's wide-eyed, harrowed expression. "What's wrong?"

Jack opened his mouth to explain, then caught himself at the last second.

_What I tell you now is to be repeated to no one. Ever. Do you understand me, Jack Harkness?_

Jack was a man of his word, despite his misgivings about the whole situation. If he couldn't trust the Doctor, then who could he trust?

"No. No, I'm sure it's fine."

* * *

><p>It took them another half an hour to reach the tower. It was cylindrical, made of seamless, glimmering steel, contrasting starkly with the blasted desolation around them. Aside from a somewhat small entrance door on one side (which was shut, obviously) and what looked like a transmission array on top, it was completely featureless.<p>

"So what is this thing?" Rory asked, gazing up and down the height of the tower.

"Dunno." The Doctor replied, less brightly than usual due to the destruction surrounding them putting damper on his bouncy demeanour. "Only one way to find out."

He strode over to the entrance and ran it over with the sonic, flicking it up to read the results

"So what is it?" Katherine had moved over and was peering suspiciously at the blank grey door.

"A door."

The blonde rolled her eyes. "I meant the _tower._"

He continued to inspect the sonic screwdriver, muttering to himself. By now all four of his companions had moved up to his position in front of the entrance. "Constant multiple large power streams running up the length of the tower... magnetic fields from shock absorbers arrays... something big, something powerful, something shaking..."

"A drill?"

"I really should keep you around more often, Captain Harkness."

Jack grinned briefly in triumph, but quickly adopted a more sombre expression. "Doesn't make much sense though – why do all this just to mine a planet?" He mused, motioning to the landscape around them.

"Wait – back up," Rory interjected. "Why would someone come and mine this place anyway? I mean, something tells me whoever built this thing doesn't live here."

"Correct, Rory. The Kappamarine natives banned mining thousands of years ago."

"So – aliens?"

"Well, different aliens, but yes. And to Jack – damn good question."

"I assume we're here to stop them?" Amy surmised.

"On the money, Pond."

"As usual."

"Bit smug, aren't you?"

Amy grinned. "Rich coming from you."

"Point taken." The Doctor moved forward and ran the sonic down the length door, leading to a brief humming noise and the door sliding open.

"Woah-woah-woah," Rory started, moving forward to lower the Doctor's arm. "What're you doing? Won't there be alarms, or guards, or something?"

"Disabled the alarms."

"And the guards?"

"Nothing left to guard against," he replied grimly. "Come on. Time to poke this hornets' nest with a stick."

* * *

><p>The interior did turn out to be unguarded, as the Doctor predicted, but this didn't ease Rory's nervousness. Instinct told him that something was seriously not right here, and that complacency wasn't the root cause of their apparent ease with which they moved through the wide metal catwalks, ascending grated steel ramps. Pipes emitted hot, coloured gas intermittently around them, and they had to take care to time their advances so they wouldn't get turned into (the alternative was the Doctor sending Jack on a suicide mission to close a few vents that were invariably at the other end of the catwalk – a plan which he pre-emptively rejected. Immortal or not, dying was hardly a pleasant experience).<p>

"Is this how it usually goes? Running up and down corridors?" Katherine inquired breathlessly as they rested after another dash between jets of scalding steam.

"Mostly. Best get used to it. Now, I believe the control room is on the other side of this wall..." The Doctor ran his fingers over the apparently featurless concrete wall, muttering to himself as he felt for crevices in the dark-grey surface that were seemingly only visible to him. "Aha!" He exclaimed, having evidently found something of interest. He pulled out his sonic with a fluid cock of the wrist and aimed it at the spot. To Katherine's utter astonishment, the wall faded away, revealing a empty room, glittering with electric lights and screens.

"Perception filter. Amazing things, eh? Most versatile devices in the universe, after sonic screwdrivers. And phones."

Katherine rolled her eyes and muttered to Rory "Do you get the impression that he likes showing off sometimes?"

Rory chuckled. "Just sometimes?" Katherine began to laugh in turn, before a lethally-tipped glance from Amy silenced her. She and Rory had always been a bit too friendly for Amy's comfort – granted, her comfort zone involved next to no friendliness at all.

They moved inside the network of rooms, glancing around at the array of lights and instruments that surrounded them. The Doctor purposefully strode down a series of walkways into one of the deeper enclaves, setting to work on one of the central panels, lips firmly pressed together, a determined look on his face.

"What're you doing?" Amy had followed and was now leaning against one of the few unused spaces on the wall, frowning slightly.

"They're mining this place for carbide – some of the richest untapped deposits in this cluster. But, of course, they decided to nuke the entire planet first. As they always would. Well, at least I can stop them getting this – stop them _winning._"

"Winning? What the hell are you talking about? Doctor, spit it out. You've known who they are from the moment we stepped into this place."

"Fine – yes, I have."

"And you haven't told us – told _me_... _why?_"

"I don't want you getting alarmed," he replied tersely.

"_Alarmed?_" Amy pushed herself off the wall, her arms folded across her chest. Her eyes had narrowed so much her vivid green irises were barely visible. "Doctor, I've been with you for quite a while now. And do you know the one time I get worried? It's when you don't trust us. Trust me. 'Cause that's when you make mistakes."

The Doctor looked up at the redhead, stung deeply by the words. _How could she say that? Given how she's putting up an invincible force-field around her mind?_

"Amelia, listen to me, please. Of course I trust you. I trust you more than I've trusted anyone in decades. Centuries. You're the _other_ last of my kind, how could I not? I already told you how important you are to me, Amelia. I meant every single word." _I trust you more than anything, Amelia. Why don't you trust me the same way?_

She surveyed him, her face inscrutable. _She wants to... but she can't. Something is holding her back. _The moment lasted a mere fraction of a second before she relaxed, the tension flowing out of her shoulders. She took his restless hand, entwining her soft, long fingers between his.

"I know you do. So why can't you just tell me? Only me."

He gazed, searching, into her eyes... eyes so like his own, despite their colour. He took in a deep breath. "Alright."

* * *

><p>Rory and Katherine sat awkwardly in the first room in the network, feeling decidedly useless. Jack was busy inspecting the room, frowning as if on the brink of recognising the source. The Doctor had disappeared, muttering, deeper into the network of rooms. Upon seeing this, Amy shook her head and also started muttering, following after him. Rory's eyes followed her, jealousy, regret and an ever-growing sense of resignation creeping around the edges of his pupils.<p>

_I'm losing her... maybe I've already lost her._

He should say something. Do something. Yell and scream at the Doctor for stealing her away. Shake and hold her until she came back to her senses... _what senses? Try to make her human again? Try and make her break her promise never to leave him? Neither is going to happen, Rory Williams, and you know it. You'll just hurt them by trying._

"You OK?" Katherine, ever perceptive, had noticed him staring listlessly at a blank piece of wall.

"Yeah. Yeah, fine."

She frowned. "It's Amy, isn't it?"

He started, shocked. _Is it really that obvious?_ "Nice try, but I'm not about to talk about that with you now. Sorry."

Katherine smiled understandingly. "I get it. But if you want my advice, go along with whatever she wants. And I really mean that – _whatever_ she wants. For your own protection."

"My _protection? _What the hell do you mean?"

She sighed. "Look, let me tell you a story. The morning you and the Doctor left to grab the TARDIS, I went on a walk. Stupid, I know, I was bound to get caught by those mobster-blokes, and I did. I was so sure I was gonna die, or worse, but then Amy showed up, and she saved me."

Rory's eyes widened in astonishment. _Amy, saving Katherine Broad? That's a first._ "How? What did she do to them?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"She didn't do anything to them at all. She just stood there and told them to run away. And they ran away. All she did was remind them who she was, then gave some vague threat of something terrible happening, and they bolted. They were absolutely terrified of her, Rory. Hardened, time-travelling thugs crapping their pants _at the mention of her name_. I told Jack, and he didn't seen too happy to hear about this either. What kind of girl is she? That's why I'm telling you, Rory, that for your protection, if she tells you to leave – _you leave._"

Rory's mind was buzzing, a maelstrom of a million thoughts circling around his head. The shattered, unintelligible pieces of the puzzle that had accumulated ever since he'd come aboard, and especially ever since that conversation he'd heard by the fireplace, were finally beginning to come into place. He remembered that shocking, hot-blooded murder of that man on the starship.

_So there's something about her Time Lordiness that when coupled with her emotions makes her a deadly psychopath at times. And knowing her, she'd be as scared of this as anyone else, and hating herself for it. So she wants to save me from herself... Oh Amy._ Guilt, hot, thick, unexpected, washed over him, as he admonished herself for ever doubting whether her feelings for him were genuine.

Still, though, he was still aware of the thrall the Doctor was inadvertently casting over her. He was stealing her hearts away... and neither of them knew it yet. _Do I have a right, now, to intervene? To keep her from starting something else with him before she's done with me? Even though our engagement is doomed?_

He was spared facing his complete lack of an answer by a piercing, echoing Scottish-accented voice from within.

"Rory! Katherine!" Amy yelled in the distance. They both stood instantly, surprised at the sudden fear in her voice and the fact that she'd actually used Katherine's first name for once. "Get out of here! Right now!"

* * *

><p>The truth has a price, they say. It was a saying very familiar to the Doctor – Rule One, after all – and he was well aware of its veracity. In this case the price was decidedly minor (compared to other truths he'd avoided and not avoided in the past) but it was also one he was starkly aware of before the fact.<p>

He'd told her. One word. That's all it took. And just as he knew she would, she'd jerked backwards as if slapped, frantically shaking her head, the blood rushing from her face and her pupils dilating. Before he could say any words of reassurance or explanation, she'd stormed out, racing back to the others to warn them of the imminent, dire threat. Just as he'd known she would.

But that was the price, wasn't it? If he really was going to do this, be with her for the rest of both their potentially infinite lives, it was a cost that needed to be paid from time to time.

_Still, at this present moment, _he mused, muttering darkly to himself as he raced back to find her before she made them flee back to the TARDIS, _it's annoyingly inconvenient._

"Rory! Katherine!" he heard her shout from just ahead. "Get out of here! Right now!"

"Amy, wait!" He caught up with her and grabbed her arm, pulling both to a sudden halt. "I know you're alarmed, but that's why I have to do this. Why I have to stop them. Now."

She spun around, her face lined with fear. "Do you _seriously_ think this is the time to be playing hero? Have you _looked_ outside?"

"Of course not, Amy. No one knows more than me what they are, what they can do. But _this_ is my duty. My _responsibility_. To the universe. Because this – _this_ – is what I do. What I _have_ to do." His voice was threatening to rise, but he kept it under control. It was critical, so important, that she understood this. Understood that he, and only he, had stood countless times between them and the end of countless lives. He'd already let them escape once, due to his own foolishness. Billions had died because of it. He would _not_ make the same mistake twice.

"Why you?" She shot back, her temper rising at his intransigence. His self-control shattered.

"_**BECAUSE I AM THE DOCTOR AND IF I DON'T, NO ONE WILL, AMELIA!**_"

Dead silence. Only the shallow, ragged breaths of the Doctor, the whirring of computers and the distant humming of the drill was audible.

"And so..." Amy's voice was low, quiet, rigidly controlled. "You think... that makes it OK to drag everyone along to their deaths?"

The words pierced him right to the core, a spear thrust right through his twin hearts. His shoulders slumped, the determination that had been driving him flooding out of his body.

"Of course... no. Never. Yes. You're right, Amy. I... I forgot... I'm... I'm..." His eyes dropped and his voice broke, his shame choking his words, rolling through the psychic field around him. He'd let his pride and arrogance blind him to the terrible, terrible danger he'd put his friends in. Again.

Unexpectedly, he felt a warmth envelop his body, slender arms wrapping themselves around his shoulders, soft red hair massaging his cheek, its strawberry and poppy-fields scent wafting into his senses. "I told you, Doctor," he heard her whisper. "Don't ever apologise." Her presence and words were a panacea for the freshly exposed scars, and he pulled himself together, her flame lighting his once more. He broke the embrace and gave her a brief, grateful smile. _What would I do without you, Amelia Pond?_

The other three burst into the room, breathless, and saw the Time Lord and Time Lady totally lost in each others' eyes.

"Do you two need a room?" Jack remarked, his eyebrows having ascended to his fringe. "Oh – sorry, Rory."

"Not a problem," Rory waved him off. He turned to the Doctor and Amy, whose cheeks had reddened from Jack's quip. "We thought heard you two shouting, and thought, well, that you had run into something..."

"Dangerous," Katherine finished.

"Dangerous?" the Doctor said. "Yes. In a sense. Very dangerous. Potentially, the most dangerous thing in the universe. I apologise – I shouldn't have brought you all here. But it seems we're lucky – we haven't run into any of the operators yet. But not relying on luck any more – you should all head back to the TARDIS, right now, as Amy said."

"And you? What's so nasty that you've suddenly become all protective?" Jack queried suspiciously.

The Time Lord moved his gaze to the former Time Agent's, both sets of clear sky-blue eyes locking. "I think you know," he said quietly. "The wide walkways. The ramps. The architecture. Carbide mining. The completely pointless annihilation of a planet. Think about it, Jack."

It took a few seconds... but then it clicked. He gasped, his face paling. "Oh. _Oh._"

"Yeah."

"Right. I'll take the others back to the TARDIS as quickly and safely as I possibly can. You can count on me, Doctor."

The Doctor nodded. "Thank you, Captain Harkness."

"And you're staying, I presume? To shut this place down?"

"Only thing I can do now. If I can find a way to control the drill, I can send out a timed pulse that should cause a seismic resonance effect that destroys any other operating drills on the planet. Not much use in comparison to being able to save the planet, but that's gone now. I have to do what I can."

Jack nodded. "And Amy?"

"What?" The Scot's eyes narrowed, glaring at him. "It's you lot that I'm concerned about, not me."

Jack glanced at the Doctor, questioning. He chuckled softly in reply. "I'd probably have to knock her out to get her to change her mind."

"Don't even think about it."

Suddenly, Rory realised what they were talking about. He moved forward, imposing himself as best he could on the conversation. "If she stays, I stay."

"Rory, it's dangerous, more than you could imagine," the Doctor warned.

"I don't care. I go where she goes."

"Rory," Amy moved up to him, resting a hand on his cheek, "Please, please, listen to me. If you stay with us, you'll probably be killed, and I can't... I can't bear that, Rory. I can't. Please do this. For me."

"I don't care for my own safety, Amy. Only yours," he replied firmly. She smiled wanly, and pulled him in, pressing his lips onto hers. He felt her genuine, deep, love through the kiss, as always, but there was something else. Something new.

Sadness.

She broke away and gazed deep into his eyes. "I know. And - and that's why I love you. But now..." Something hot welled up inside her, threatening to burst out. She wrestled it down. _Don't cry. Amelia Pond doesn't cry. _

"I swore to protect you. I promised," he said softly, suddenly aware of what was coming. Jack seemed to sense it too, because he placed a gentle hand on Katherine's shoulder and led her out of the room, giving the pair space. The Doctor just stood there, frozen, unable to comprehend what was clearly taking place before his eyes.

She bit her lip, clearly struggling to compose herself for once, knowing that she was about to deliver the most difficult words of her life. "No one can protect me now, Rory Williams. Not Aunt Sharon. Not you. No one..." _Don't cry. Don't cry. Don't cry._ "Except the Doctor. Because he is the last of my kind, Rory. And... I'm sorry... I'm so sorry, but..."

"I'm not."

She couldn't do it any longer. She broke, pulling him fiercely into her arms, sobbing violently into his shirt, wanting nothing more than to never let go, but knowing that she would have to. Knowing that she already had. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." she repeated again and again, a mantra of regret, a plea for penance she knew she didn't deserve. Rory just stroked his now-ex-fiancée's hair, his own eyes red with tears. There was no anger. No resentment. No jealousy.

Just sadness, and regret for what could have been. What could never be.

"I love you. I will always love you." The words simply made her sob even harder, her grief crashing down onto her in ever-stronger waves of slicing pain.

Behind them, the Doctor looked away, ravaged by guilt. Unable to watch the reaping of the fruits of his lie, the disintegration of the relationship he and he alone had ruined.

_This is all your fault. The Destroyer Of Worlds... and people. _There they were: Rory Williams, innocent, kind-hearted, his life turned upside down because of him, and the girl who waited for him for her whole life... glorious, beautiful Amelia Pond, her hearts shattered and broken._ Because of you._

He didn't know how he would repay the mountainous debt he owed her. He didn't know if he ever could.

But he swore on his life that he would try.

* * *

><p><strong>Poor Rory. I like the guy as well... but at least it ended on somewhat "nice" terms for him.<strong>


	19. Steel Catwalks and Metal Pipes

**CHAPTER 19. Steel Catwalks and Metal Pipes: 3 November 2010**

In the days and weeks afterwards, neither Amy nor Rory would be entirely sure just how long they spent clinging to each other, tears streaming down their faces as they let go of the life they had hoped to share one day. When, finally, they had no more tears left to shed, they let go of each other, losing themselves in the other's eyes one last time. Eventually, Amy felt a gentle, soft hand on her back and a little psychic nudge, pulling her back to reality. She had a job to do.

"I'll see you back at the TARDIS," she said, trying to infuse some life and warmth back into her voice.

"Take care of yourself, will you?"

"I'll try my best."

He squeezed her hand and walked out, back towards the first rooms of the network from whence they had come. Jack and Katherine were waiting patiently a few rooms from where they'd run into Amy and the Doctor. They both took one look at his face and instantly knew what had happened.

"Will you be OK?" Katherine asked, concern and sympathy written on her blonde-curtained face.

He had no idea how, but a ghost of a smile found its way onto his face. "I will be."

* * *

><p>After Rory had left, Amy had simply stood there, staring at the space where he once was. Her face was completely expressionless, her emerald eyes bereft of their usual flicker. A stray lock of her shining red hair had fallen into her mouth, but she didn't seem to notice.<p>

Trembling, unsure if he should, the Doctor reached a hand up to her face and brushed the hair out of her mouth. His touch seemed to awaken her and her eyes, still disconcertingly lifeless, moved to his.

"Are you OK?" He asked as gently as he possibly could. She didn't respond, or move. She just continued to stare, her beautiful face totally blank, reminiscent of someone whose life had simply vanished from their body – a phenomenon the Doctor had seen multiple times.

"Amelia, are you OK?" He hesitated, then decided to enter her mind again. As he'd expected, there was absolutely no resistance to his entry, and he immersed himself in her consciousness.

_Pain. Regret. Pain. Pain. Loneliness. Loss. Grief. Pain._

He flinched, withdrawing himself from her mind. "Amelia... I'm sorry. I'm so, so, sorry. I know you probably don't want anything to do with me now, but if there's anything-"

"Doctor," she spoke up suddenly, the fire returning to her eyes without warning. "Didn't I just tell you never to apologise?"

He smiled, relieved that she hadn't, in the short term, become too emotionally damaged to help. "Welcome back, Amy Pond."

"Hi to you too," she grumbled. "Now, don't we have a job to do?"

* * *

><p>Of course, it had been the Doctor's entry into her mind that had triggered her ascent out of her wallowing in her own sorrow and remorse. She'd felt it as soon as she'd entered, and unbidden, a wave of fury built up inside her, and was rapidly approaching its crest when he'd exited of his own accord. He saw his reaction, saw the guilt, saw her pain become his, and she smothered the wave of anger out of existence. It wouldn't do to hurt the only person she truly had remaining in her life when they were only trying to help her.<p>

She then remembered that she was indeed here for a reason, and that she was supposed to be helping him – not having him pity her. She dealt with it the only way she knew how – she manufactured psychic barriers on the whim of a thought and hammered them down all over her mind, shutting out her grief for now. There'd be time to deal with it later – and as a Time Lady, she had a lot of that.

The Doctor began to speak. _Oh gods,_ she groaned internally, _he's apologising again. That stupid, wonderful man – doesn't he ever listen? Probably not._

"Doctor, didn't I just tell you never to apologise?"

* * *

><p>They returned back to the room where Amy had discovered the truth from the Doctor, Amy seemingly having completely reverted to her normal self. Whilst unsurprising, this deeply unnerved the Doctor, that this should be her one and only defence mechanism – compartmentalisation on a scarcely believable scale. <em>No wonder that she's bottled up something so traumatic as to render her psychically unstable,<em> he mused.

He made a mental note that one day he'd have to deal with that with her – although he suspected she already knew what the consequences of trapping such dangerous, destabilising thoughts could be. That frightened him even more, that she was willing to risk that to avoid facing whatever trauma she'd experienced in whatever that white expanse was...

He shook his head, clearing it of the distraction. Amy was right – they _did_ have a job to do.

"OK, so we're here – now what?" Amy asked as they found themselves standing in front of the same array of levers and switches the Doctor had been working on beforehand.

"Now I work out what everything does and try to set up that seismic pulse thingy," he replied, running his sonic over the panel.

"Aaaand... do you know _how_ to set up this seismic pulse thingy?"

"What was that rule about stupid questions, Pond?"

Amy groaned. "Couldn't you actually go in with a _proper_ plan for a change?"

"Where's the fun in that?"

Amy punched him in the arm. "Could you please stop answering my questions with more questions?"

He grinned, flipping the sonic up to inspect. "Hypocrite."

"Idiot."

"Ha. Says the girl who can't tell a beach from an active volcano when flying the TARDIS. Anyway, it looks like these panels have been remotely locked. So we're wasting our time here."

She rolled her eyes. "Typical," she muttered. "OK. Where to, then?"

"Up."

* * *

><p>"Watch it now," Katherine warned, reaching out a hand to stop Rory walking headlong into a jet of scalding steam. "Don't really feel like cooked nurse for dinner."<p>

Rory shook his head. "Thanks," he muttered. It was the fifth time either Jack or Katherine had had to intervene to stop him accidentally doing something stupid in his absent-mindedness. No matter how hard he tried, that final image of Amy's beautiful but totally blank, dead-looking face haunted him. Intellectually, he knew she could pull through – she'd gotten through worse, much worse, in the past, but it still tore at him to see her hurt like that. His own pain was irrelevant in comparison.

As for the Doctor... that was a ball of emotions he didn't could even begin to untangle. Irrational anger at what he did to her inadvertently. Jealousy over how he had – again, inadvertently – stolen her from him. Sympathy for the obvious anguish and guilt that he could see written in every line of the Doctor's falsely young face. Hope and expectation that he could give her what she wanted, what she needed, since he was the only one who could.

_Unravel THAT._

"Rory!" Jack shouted, gripping his arm to pull him back from walking in front of another superheated jet. He had gotten distracted again.

* * *

><p>"When you said <em>up<em> I didn't think you meant _literally,_" Amy grumbled as she gripped the Doctor's ankles, allowing him to balance himself on her shoulders. "Please tell me you're finished now, I can feel myself getting shorter my the second. I like being tall, if you didn't notice."

"Don't worry," the Doctor's slightly muffled voice called out from above. "I like you being tall too."

"Yeah, well, you're going to be sorely disappointed if you don't get off my bloody shoulders soon. You're stupid heavy, ya know that?"

Thankfully, the Doctor quickly finished his inspection of the space above the ceiling, and apparently finding nothing potentially unpleasant there, hauled himself through the hole he'd made with a grunt. He flipped himself around, dangling head-first out of the hole, and pulled the Time Lady into the ceiling.

"Right. That was ridiculous," Amy declared, brushing dust off her shirt where it had accumulated when she'd been dragged into the cavernous space above, lined with metal pipes. But for the lack of metal catwalks, it looked more or less the same as the rest of the tower's interior aside from the rooms from which they had ascended. "So where are we?"

"In a ceiling, obviously."

As anyone but him could have predicted, Amy was none too impressed with this answer, and let him know this in the usual way. "Could you stop doing that?" he snapped, rubbing his arm furiously.

"When you start giving straight answers, maybe."

"Why would I do that? But to answer your question, this is a service area. We need to find the main power conduits to the drill so I can manually control the drill that way. Simple enough."

"In theory."

* * *

><p>It was now becoming quite painfully clear to Jack that how ever much he <em>wanted<em> to be, and however much he'd tried to pass himself of as being as-good-as, he'd never be the Doctor.

The Doctor, for one thing, wouldn't have got them all lost in a colossal drilling structure. He hadn't _meant_ to, of course, but all these walkways looked exactly the goddamned same, and at one three-way juncture, his memory had failed him. With absolutely no distinguishing features between the three choices whatsoever, he'd decided to go left, hoping that sheer dumb luck was on his side.

Half an hour later, it became blatantly obvious that it wasn't.

"We really, really should just turn back," Katherine suggested.

"What, and get lost again?" Rory rebuked, ever the voice of reason. "Let's at least try to find out where the hell we are first." Jack had passed over effective control of the group over to the young, level-headed man, knowing it probably wouldn't be the best look to be taking command when he'd had such an embarrassing blue. Now knowing that he was responsible for other lives, Rory put his own emotions to one side – being a nurse, it was something he did on a daily basis.

They moved down what Katherine suspected was at least the twentieth metal ramp, and found themselves staring at a wall identical to the one they had run into earlier.

"Looks the same... another perception filter, I'm guessing," Jack said shrewdly.

"Probably. This isn't where we want to be, though, we should go back."

Katherine, however, wasn't having a bar of it. "I'll bet a thousand pounds there's something interesting behind this 'wall'. And if I put my hand here, like he did..." She ran her palm down the wall, apparently looking for some spot on the wall. Seemingly finding it, she turned, palm still fixed to the wall. "Can I borrow a gun, Jack?"

"Er... what for?"

"Pretty please?" She pouted in the way she knew men – especially men like Jack – wouldn't be able to resist. And she was right. "Thank you," she intoned sweetly as Jack handed over a silver, futuristic hand gun to her. Before Jack could ask her what she planned to do, she had taken her palm off the wall, flipped the pistol so she was holding the barrel, and smashed the handle against the spot where her hand had been.

The two men watched, mouths agape, as the wall flickered haphazardly through the spectrum of colours and then vanished, revealing a steel-lined circular room with a long, thin metal device fixed to the centre of the floor.

"Easy as pie," she remarked, handing back the gun, smugness creeping into her voice.

"So what the hell is this thing?" Rory asked, moving cautiously into the room. The walls, he could see, were covered in little glowing green or red nodes, sticking out of the wall as if some special plug was required to activate them.

"Looks like a transmitter of some kind... and it's active, obviously," Jack added, inspecting the ten foot high device at the centre of the room.

"Shouldn't we shut it off, then?"

"What, and tell everyone we're here? Don't think so."

"Guys, look at this," Katherine called out from the opposite side of the room from Rory. She was frowning, inspecting a switch. "I've found a node that says 'Alarm system' above it."

"Really?" Rory moved over to her, seeing that she was right –the node she was staring at was definitely labelled 'Alarm System'. "Well. So it is. Maybe this is some kind of secondary control room."

"Well, first things first, how come I can read it? Or does everyone speak English in the future?"

"That'd be the TARDIS translating it for you. She puts a matrix in your head, you can read and speak almost every language ever invented now."

"Handy."

"It is a bit." He turned his attention back to the node, which was glowing red. "Seems disabled... that's strange."

"Yeah, that's the other weird thing. It's not just this one, it's this whole panel of alarms and stuff, all set to 'disabled'. No wonder we got in so easily, it's almost as if they threw out the welcoming mat for us," she mused.

"Sorry," Jack called out behind them suddenly. They turned, and were surprised to see his face shorn of all colour, his eyes wide. "But what did you just say?"

She opened her mouth to explain, but whatever words came out were drowned out by the sudden blaring of alarms that erupted all around them. At the same moment, a massive tremor ran through the floor, knocking the three off their feet.

"_The hell's going on?_" Rory yelled in the chaos as the shaking began to intensify.

"_We have to get out of here!" _Jack screamed, his voice barely audible over the groaning and screeching of metal twisting and shearing audible above them. _"Now!"_

* * *

><p>"I'm seriously starting to have second thoughts about this now, you know." Amy remarked as they hauled themselves upwards using a network of horizontal pipes, supporting their backs on the side of the narrow shaft they were in.<p>

"Oh, quit your whining, Pond. You could always go back to the TARDIS with Rory if you wanted," the Doctor rebuked.

It was the wrong thing to say. He felt a wave of guilt emanate from her through the psychic field, and he paused to look down at her. Her face had taken on that terrible blank expression again. He closed his eyes and banged his head softly against a metal pipe, a sick, twisted feeling in his stomach. "That was stupid of me, Amelia, I-"

"_**Doctor, for the last bloody time, I don't want your bloody pity, got it?"**_ Her voice was razor-sharp, red-hot steel, penetrating to his core. If he had been feeling guilty and somewhat nauseous before, the sensation was exponentially greater now.

Below him, Amy closed her eyes, flinching. "I shouldn't have said that. I didn't mean to say that. I know you'd only ever try to help me. Sorry, Doctor."

He smiled gently at her. "There's nothing to apologise for, Amelia. I know this is hard, so hard for you. By rights, you should hate me right now."

"Why the hell would I hate you?" She opened her eyes again, a bemused expression on her face. "You're all I have now. Come on. Let's just keep moving."

They continued to climb, but an awkward tension had fallen over the pair – there was none of the flirty banter, the exchange of slicing witticisms between the two now. It was a relief when they finally reached the service area at top of the shaft, not only because they could stop climbing (Amy's arms were now very, very sore), but because the change of setting gave them a convenient icebreaker.

"So. Right place?"

"Yep. Just a bit down that way," The Doctor said, gesturing down a pipe-lined hallway – although it was clear that it wasn't designed as such, given how the passage narrowed and widened seemingly at random. The pair had to squeeze themselves through some parts sideways to get through. A few minutes later, and one comment from Amy about how her chest would never be the same after this which made the Doctor's cheeks go beetroot-red, they reached a large box, from which a series of multicoloured cables could be seen trailing.

"This it?"

"Just the one. Could you give us a mo?" He asked, sonicing the box open and pulling out several discarded cables that he had found along the way. "Got some rewiring to do."

"Don't electrocute yourself now."

"That's the plan."

She wandered around, inspecting the service area around them. The space had opened up, transitioning to the steel catwalk again, although the area covered by the catwalk was considerably larger than what they had encountered before. The floor beneath the box the Doctor was busy at work on was perfectly insulated stone, presumably to prevent any possibility of the power from the cables shorting into the grated steel, with the obvious bad consequences of several thousand amps of electricity running through the floor. A red cable beneath the floor caught Amy's eye through the gaps in the grating. She bent down to read the labelling.

_Teleporter power supply..._ but why would a mining drill need a teleporter? And why would there be a teleporter right here? What was it all for?

It hit her. She gasped, jerking upright, fear flooding through her. _Oh no. No no no no. That can't be. _

"Okay!" The Doctor called out behind her. "Rewiring's all done. All I have to do is divert the power through my little thing here, and kaboom! No more drills, anywhere on Kappamarine. It'll take a few million years, but the planet will recover again."

"Doctor, wait!" Amy cried out, running over to the box to stop him connecting the final wire. "Don't do it. If you divert the power, we'll all be killed. Please, please, wait."

He frowned. "Amy, what do you mean?"

"It's a trap. It has to be. There's a teleporter _here_. _Right here._ As soon as you connect it, they'll know, and they'll come, and we'll both be dead." His expression didn't change. Amy stared at him, astonished at his apparent lack of comprehension, then she realised.

"You knew." She began, quietly. "You knew all along. All this time, you _knew_ we were walking into a trap."

The Doctor's eyes widened, sensing what was coming. "Amy, I-"

"You lied to me. _**Again!**_" Spit flew out of her mouth as she screamed the last word. He gripped her hands, gazing intently at her emerald eyes which were burning with indignation.

"Amy, yes, I did, and I shouldn't have. I'm sorry. But you _know_ that I would never let you into in a situation I knew we couldn't get out of. You know how much you mean to me, I would never, _ever_ let that happen. Right now, Amy Pond, I need you to trust me. I know I don't deserve it. Not after everything I've done to you. But just this once, can you trust me?"

She looked at him. Stared at his young-old face. The enigmatic sky-blue eyes. The man who had promised to be back in five minutes, and returned twelve years later, leaving her twisted, bitter, and broken along the way, subject to torment beyond imagining. Looked at the man who had returned, then inadvertently wiped away her humanity and caused the disintegration of her engagement to the one and only person who had truly stood with her for her entire life. Looked at the man who had lied to her again and again, been the cause of so much sorrow and pain. Looked at the man who kept flaunting her one sacred rule, kept violating the sanctity of her mind.

And nodded.

He smiled, pulling her into an all-encompassing hug, resting her fiery head in the crook of his neck, breathing in her scent, kissing her temple. "Thank you," he whispered into her ear. She broke off, meeting his eyes, steeling herself. "Ready?" He asked gently.

"Ready."

"Get your sonic, and be ready to run when I give the signal. Clear?"

"Crystal." She turned around, back pressed against the cold stone wall, her knuckles white from gripping the sonic phone so hard.

The Doctor moved his attention, sonic in hand, back to the box. He took in one, last, deep breath, and connected the final cable.

At that instant, two things happened.

First, an enormous jolt ran through the steel floor as the drill changed frequency and intensity, the programmed power surge the Doctor had built into to his makeshift circuit causing the magnetic fields controlling it to automatically realign. The Doctor had to cling onto Amy to make sure she didn't lose her balance and fall face-first onto the cheese-grater-like metal floor that surrounding the piece of stone they were standing on.

The brief shift in the drill's operation caused a powerful tremor to shoot from the base of the drill and into the ground, propagating at several miles a second through the blasted surface of the planet. As the Doctor had intended, the precise frequencies of the pulse were tuned to induce a resonance effect in the drills. As the pulse propagated through the planet's interior, the drills began to oscillate wildly, their natural modes of operation amplifying their motions, shearing the steel beams that held the drills to the massive structures supporting them. Within ten seconds of being hit by the seismic pulse, regardless of location, each and every drill had quite literally shaken itself to pieces.

More immediate to the Doctor and Amy, however, was the sudden whooshing of air that announced the arrival of the drills' owners. Five of them surrounded the Time Lord and Lady, arranged in a tight semicircle, leaving no room for escape. The trap had shut.

"_Exterminate!"_

* * *

><p><strong>I believe the common turn of phrase is <em>cliffhanger<em>.  
><strong>


	20. Time Lords In A Trap

**There's a possibility that the update frequency _may_ drop off a bit after this. You seriously, _seriously_ don't want to know about the enormous backlog and upcoming mountain of work (oh, and exams) uni has piled upon my poor soul.**

**Katherine's less-than-flattering description of the Daleks in this chapter comes courtesy of a mate of mine when we were discussing their visual appearance one day. It is, indeed, highly uncomplimentary and I hope people aren't offended by that, but I laughed so hard when he first came up with it that I simply had to include it.**

* * *

><p>"<em>Sorry, can I ask again? You mentioned a mistake?"<br>**"**Oh, big, mistake. Huge. Didn't anyone ever tell you? There's one thing you never put in a trap. If you're smart, if you value your continued existence, if you have any plans about seeing tomorrow, there is one thing you never, ever put in a trap."  
>"And what would that be, sir?"<br>"Me."_

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 20. Time Lords In A Trap: 3 November 2010<strong>

Amy's hearts were beating at two hundred beats a minute – each. Around her were the unmistakable armour shells of five armed and operational Daleks. They were bigger and considerably more colourful than she remembered but they were most definitely Daleks, and they certainly behaved just as she had remembered.

_If you've got a brilliant plan, Doctor, about now would be the time to carry out._

"_Exterminate!"_ cried the Daleks in their familiar, staccato-mechanical tones, their voices only just carrying over the enormous din of the disintegrating drill-piece. Evidently, they were in no hurry to inflict doom upon the Time Lord pair.

As always, this proved their downfall.

Had Amy being paying attention whilst the Doctor worked, she would have noticed that not all the cables he'd attached to his little circuit went into the box. Four, in fact, snaked over the concrete oasis they were standing on and onto the metal catwalk, their exposed tips coming into contact with the grated steel.

Five seconds after the Daleks' arrival, the seismic pulse emanating from the rapidly self-destructing drill housed within the massive steel structure reached its peak. There was now nothing that could be done to prevent all the drills on the planet from being destroyed, and the Dalek presence on its surface purged.

Of course, it was only the drill that was destroyed. The structure itself was still in working order for now. Which meant the Doctor still had several million watts of power at his disposal.

"Press five," he whispered out of the corner of his mouth. "_Now._" She did so, the purple crystal gleaming as the sonic phone activated.

Just as he'd planned all along, the sonic signal temporarily redirected the current into the four cables leading and into the steel catwalk. Seeking the quickest path to ground, the current shot outwards to conduct to the outer steel wall and down to the ground - which meant going straight through the Daleks and their metal armour shells.

The current surge running through the Daleks only lasted a fraction of a second until the Doctor pressed his own sonic, cutting off the power to the four wires, but the electricity coursing through them for said fraction of a second was originally intended to power an energy drill that could crack through several miles of solid rock. Shields or not, they stood no chance.

Smoke suddenly billowed from the edges of their casings, and sparks shot out of their eyestalks. A horrid, acrid stench of melted plastic and burnt flesh filled the air.

"Run!"

Amy didn't need telling twice.

* * *

><p>Jack, Katherine and Rory rushed out of the transmitter room, just as a ten-metre long piece of twisted steel pylon came crashing through the ceiling. The shaking was so intense that they had to grip each other to keep themselves falling over in a heap, swaying from side to side as they staggered as quickly as they could down the catwalk, only just remembering about the boiling steam jets that they had to avoid.<p>

Then, after about a minute, a huge jolt knocked all three to the floor, and as suddenly as it had come, the noise of shearing steel and the tremors running through the steel catwalks ceased completely

"O... kay..." Rory began quietly, picking himself off the metal, suspicious of the sudden apparent return to normalcy. "What the hell just happened?"

"I think that was the Doctor and Amy disabling the drill," Jack surmised. "We should get out of here, though, right now. That transmitter back there was probably to signal them that someone was interfering with the drill, and they'll be coming in droves now. Oh, and this structure will probably collapse soon-ish anyway, based on all that noise. We have to be long gone by then."

"Who's 'they'? They don't sound friendly, whoever they are," Katherine guessed, based on the grim determination in Jack's voice and the bits of shouting she'd heard between the Doctor and Amy before.

"You seriously don't want to know."

"Right." Katherine muttered. She gathered that despite her natural curiosity, if whoever-they-were unnerved Jack as much as this, it probably wasn't in her best interests to find out their identities quite yet. Maybe later.

They rounded a corner on one of the catwalks, still without the faintest clue where the exit was. They'd decided that given that the door was at the base of the tower, their best bet would be to keep going down. They sprinted down another ramp and found themselves less than ten metres from a red-plated Dalek which was inspecting the lower levels, searching for the now-escaped Doctor and Amy.

"The hell is that thing?" Rory asked apprehensively.

"Dalek. They're the ones who operate these drills," Jack informed him rapidly. He fumbled on his hip for his most powerful blaster whilst trying to force the two mortals away with an arm and his body.

"I thought these were supposed to be the most dangerous aliens in existence?" Katherine asked, eyebrows raised. These large, colourful metal constructs weren't exactly her idea of evil, deadly aliens.

"They _are._"

"They look like big red upside-down rubbish bins," she declared, utterly unimpressed. "With plungers stuck to them."

Rory burst out laughing at the girl's description despite the bad_, bad_ feeling growing in his stomach. Jack just shot her an astonished, irritated glare. By now, the Dalek had noticed the three, and was turning, the eyestalk rotating slowly to face them.

"_Intruders detected! Exterminate!"_

Katherine paled, letting out a nervous laugh. "Oookay, make that _unfriendly_ upside-down rubbish bins." They began to back away, eyes darting left and right for some escape. The Dalek began to advance on them, continuing to vocalise its deadly intentions. "We come in peace!" she reasoned, sticking her hands up, feeling like quite the idiot as she did so.

"That, never, ever, ever works," Rory told her. "Time to go?" he asked Jack, his voice beginning to tremble.

"Yep."

They turned and bolted, racing around the corner just as the first silver-blue ray beamed into the wall behind them.

* * *

><p>"Okay, I'm going to admit it, that was legitimately brilliant."<p>

The Doctor grinned slyly. "You're complimenting me - you feeling alright in the head, Pond? Not feeling queasy?"

Ordinarily, this would have earned him a punch, kick or some other form of violence, but all her limbs were currently occupied with clambering down the horizontal pipes in the narrow shaft again. Instead, she had to settle for a ferocious paint-stripping glare down at the Time Lord instead.

"Don't get used to it," she retorted, but the smirk remained fixed on the Doctor's face. "And you better not be looking up my skirt, either."

"Most definitely not." He meant it too after one incident a few weeks back, in which the glass floor in the TARDIS console had led to him accidentally dropping a thermocoupling. This had bad results, especially after they'd disentangled the space loop. The only thing more unnerving than Amy shouting at him or flirting with him was when she started doing both at the same time. No, his eyes were fixed firmly in front on the pipes in front of him.

"Good. It's not like you don't get enough of a look at my legs when we're running around anyway."

"Wh – what? I have no idea what you're talking about," he spluttered.

He could tell she was rolling her eyes above him. "Don't give me that. I've had boys staring at my legs for years, I know when it's happening. And you, Doctor, are by _far_ the worst, ya perv."

"I am not!"

"You are so."

"I _am not!_" He shot her an indignant glare.

"Oi! See? You're already looking up my skirt again."

He gulped and snapped his eyes as low as they would go, tilting his neck downwards to avoid the danger zone as best he could.

A tinkling laugh. "You're adorably hopeless, you know that? Never ever change."

"Try being on the receiving end one day and see if you like it then," he grumbled.

"Are you suggesting something there?"

He went sheet-white. "No! No. Sorry. Should've picked my words a little better."

"No apologising, remember? I'm making that a rule now."

"Since when did you have rules?"

"Since forever."

"You mean, since 1989."

"Whatever."

They continued in this fashion all the way down the shaft – Amy catching the Doctor looking up twice more – when, finally (and mercifully from the Doctor's point of view), they popped out of the bottom, leaping into the service area above the primary control rooms.

"Back the way we came, eh?"

"Don't want to get lost. That would be bad," the Doctor replied, checking his watch. "Plenty of time – good."

"Plenty of time for what?" Amy asked, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"Well, this building is structurally compromised now." He pressed his ear to the metal floor, listening to the distant vibrations still running through it. "I'd give it, oh, an hour before it collapses on top of us. But we don't need to worry about that," he added.

"And why not?" Amy inquired sharply.

"Because the power system will overload in half that time and burn everything inside to a crisp. See? Don't need to worry about it."

Amy groaned. "I swear, I am gonna smack you so hard when we get back to the TARDIS."

"I look forward to it."

They found the half-dislodged panel through which they'd climbed into the service area and dropped back into the primary control room. The lights were now all blinking wildly, various Dalek words and numbers floating across the screens.

"Looks like the security system is activated now. Or rather," he flipped out his sonic screwdriver, and with a flick of the wrist, ran it over the central console panel in the room, causing a number of green flights to change to red, "Was activated."

"So they don't know where here, yeah?" Amy asked, unable to keep an ever-so-slight note of fear from her voice.

"Nope. They know we're somewhere in the structure based on the readings, but they don't know exactly where." Another cock of the wrist to inspect the sonic. "Yeah, there we are. Lots of Daleks, two Time Lords, so that's us." He motioned to put the sonic away, but just as he was about to do so, something on the sonic reading caught his eye. "Hold on..." He frowned, inspecting it.

"What? _What?_" Amy's voice couldn't help but rise as the colour rushed from the Doctor's cheeks, his eyes wide as saucers.

"There are more readings here. Other readings. Not just us and the Daleks." He swallowed. "Human readings."

Amy felt as if a train had hit her. Her shoulders slumped and her face paled as the Doctor's had. _No. No. No, it can't be. Please, no._ "How... how many?" She whispered.

The Doctor, trembling, looked the Time Lady straight in the eye.

"Three."

* * *

><p>Miraculously, the three humans didn't meet any more Daleks on the catwalks as they ran about the lower levels of the structure, still searching for some sign of an exit. It struck Rory, however, that this might have been a sign that they were ice-cold in their search.<p>

After ten solid minutes of running in what seemed suspiciously like a rather large circle, they came across a rather familiar looking catwalk junction.

"Great." Rory groaned, "Here _again_. We're going round in circles."

Without warning, a sharp tremor ran through the metal, accompanied by a loud rumbling noise akin to a passing train. Not expecting it at all, the three were knocked off balance, clinging to the railings to keep themselves upright.

"What... was that?" Katherine asked quietly.

"There's no way this structure is stable," Jack replied. "We seriously have to get out of here, right now."

"Easy to say, hard to do, if you hadn't noticed," she reminded him. "I vote we go that way." She declared, pointing down one of the catwalks.

"Isn't that the way back to the primary control rooms?"

"Yep."

It clicked. "So the idea is to find the Doctor and Amy and get them to lead us out?"

"Pretty much," she replied brightly.

"Lead on, then, Miss Broad."

* * *

><p>"We have to find them. <em>I<em> have to find them!"

Before the Doctor could let out another word, Amy had dashed off, her footsteps echoing down the network of rooms. He cursed and raced after her, but she'd already had a healthy headstart. By the time he reached the entrance to the primary control rooms, she had disappeared out of sight. He muttered another Gallifreyean curse to himself – there was absolutely no way he could tell which way she'd gone, and if he picked the wrong way, the chances that any of them would escape were very, very slim. Almost as slim as they were right now, given that he knew that without guidance, there was no way she'd be able to find the exit in time. He had to find her.

He had only one card left to play.

_**Amy. Amy, can you hear me?**_

Nothing. Just noise, both of a temporal and emotional nature, washing all around him. She probably hadn't even noticed him in the psychic din. He closed his eyes and placed his fingers on his temples, wringing every last drop of psychic power out of his Time Lord brain.

_**Amelia, can you hear me? Please, Amy. I need you to hear this.**_

Still nothing. Panic began to rise in his throat. _I can't let this happen. I'd sooner die myself than let this happen._

_**Amy... please.**_

_**Doctor? Doctor, is that you?**_

Sheer, pure relief washed through him. He sighed, leaning back on the wall, the tension flowing off his shoulders.

_**Thank goodness. Yes, Amy, it's me.**_

_**Right. Thought it was some random memory or something like that. Care to explain WHAT you're doing inside my bloody head?**_ For good measure, she added an undertone of annoyance and suspicion to underline her point.

The Doctor swallowed, trying to hide his nervousness behind his barriers. _**I'm not in your head. I'm just sending you messages, that's all.**_

_**Which involves planting them inside my head. Which involves you GOING inside my head. I read the book, Doctor.**_

_**Technically, yes, but only in the very outer fringes. I can't see anything inside. I'm just talking to you, that's all.**_

A brief pause, evidently whilst she weighed his answer, another subtle indicator of how badly he'd abused her still-brittle trust, not just in the past few weeks, but for her entire life. _**Alright. I'll make an exception this time, **_she answered at last. _**Now what exactly is so important that you feel the need to put big flashing signposts up in my head saying 'Oi, give us a shout'? Make it snappy, Doctor, **_she added irritably, _**I'm kinda busy at the moment.**_

_**Fine. Can you get your sonic out?**_

_**Sure. **_A pause. _**Right. Got it. Now what?**_

_**Press zero-one-one-five-one-**_

_**Nine-eight-nine?**_

_**That's cheating, Pond.**_

_**I can recognise my own birthday, mister. OK. Done. Now what?**_

_**Now do whatever you have to do. I'll come find you.**_

A pause. _**Have you been playing with my sonic phone?**_

He hesitated._**No, of course not. Well, a little. Just a teensy bit. A tracking device, that's all. Don't want a repeat of Stroyet where you're out of psychic range, or lost in noise... it's not exactly good with the whole finding-people business, telepathy.**_

_**I can do it easy enough, **_she huffed.

_**Yes, and for the rest of us normal telepaths, life is a bit trickier.**_

_**Noted,**_ she replied, throwing in a little note of smugness just to tease him.

_That girl, _he thought,_ seriously..._ _**Have you found them yet?**_

_**Nah. They're somewhere below me, in the lower levels, but I'm can't get a lock on them. I just hope they're OK...**_ She trailed off, worry and guilt replacing her psychic voice.

_**Amelia, you'll find them. I know you will.**_

No answer. She was too busy worrying about Rory, feeling sick to the stomach about the way she'd treated him – the way she'd almost gotten him killed. Might have already gotten him killed. Without her knowing it, a piece of her internal thought leaked into the psychic field. _**My fault... convinced him to stay on the TARDIS...**_

He flinched. She shouldn't have to bear this pain. Not when it was in no way her fault at all.

_**Amelia, listen to me. We will find them. No one dies today. I swear, on my life, I will find you, find them, and then we'll get the hell out of here in one piece. Are we clear?**_

_**Crystal, Doctor, **_she replied curtly.**_ Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to shut you out for a while. I need to concentrate._**

* * *

><p>"Are these things shielded or something?" Rory yelled from behind a steel pillar. "I can't say we're exactly hurting them, and we sure as hell ain't missing." As if to illustrate the point, he craned his head and arm around and fired a blaster shot at one of the three Daleks at the far end of the catwalk. The glowing plasma ball appeared to strike the red outer shell before fizzling meekly, doing no discernible damage.<p>

"Yeah, they are. Sorry, should have warned you." Jack, ever the gentleman, always found time to apologise, even in the midst of a firefight. They'd barely gone up a few levels when they'd run headlong into several patrolling Daleks. There was always the option of turning around, as Rory had suggested, but Katherine and Jack both pointed out that they'd almost certainly get lost again, and given the choice between fighting the most deadly aliens in existence, or getting lost in a collapsing tower, they both chose the former without hesitation. So they got to work.

"Just keep hammering away, their shield density has to be low now," Jack shouted above the cries of '_Exterminate!'_, jerking his head back behind the pylon as another beam of deadly blue light pierced the pocket of air it had been occupying just previously. He'd already been hit once, an event that had scared the daylights out of Rory and deeply unnerved Katherine, even though she was already in the know.

"How about we concentrate on one at a time? Focus fire, like," Katherine suggested next to him as they stood in their little spots of cover, backs pressed to the steel pylons protecting them.

"Good idea. Take the one on the middle first, on three. Clear?" Rory and Katherine nodded. "Good. On one, two-" he raised his blaster, ready to fire. Rory and Katherine mirrored the gesture. "_Three!"_

They spun out from behind their pylons, simultaneously firing at the central of the three Daleks. The combined plasma ball at the point of impact went straight through the Dalek's shields, striking and piercing the metal armor. It expoded instantly, blue-yellow flames erupting from what had once been its dome as shards of metal and eyestalk went flying upwards and out of sight.

A triumphant cry, then all three hurriedly spun back into cover as the Daleks returned the salvo, attempting to avenge their fallen comrade. One down. Two to go.

* * *

><p>It had been the fastest ten minutes of Amy Pond's life.<p>

The calculating, analytical part of her mind knew that there was almost zero chance that even with her psychically souped-up intuition she would have been able to find them within ten minutes.

_That leaves twenty... twenty minutes to find them and get the hell out of here before we all get electrocuted. Damn damn damn damn damn. This is all my goddamn fault. If I hadn't been so bloody stupid, so bloody selfish this would never have been necessary. Would never have happened. _She was sinking into the pit of despair again, her pace slowing, her shoulders crumpling.

But this time luck, not always her best friend, was on her side.

"Amy!"

"Doctor?" She spun around, spotting the tall, tweed-jacketed form of the bow-tie wearing Time Lord striding towards her. Without a second thought, she raced into his arms, holding him fiercely. Her very-much-justified anger and suspicion towards him aside, he really was the last good thing in her life. Without him, she was nothing. "I'm sorry about being so sharp with you earlier when we were having that telepathic chat thingy. And for yelling at you before. It's been a tough day."

He stroked her hair, shushing her gently. "I know it has, and you should remember your own rule. Now, come on. I managed to stabilise the power supply temporarily, we should have an extra fifteen minutes or so."

It was as if someone had ignited a bonfire within her. A discernible shudder ran through her arms, her muscles tensing, ready, filled with new purpose and energy. "Well, what are we waiting for, then?" She asked excitedly. "Let's go!" She grabbed the Time Lord's hand and sprinted down the catwalk.

* * *

><p>Together, they made considerably quicker progress, barrelling down the ramps towards the lower levels where Amy could still vaguely sense the others' presence. After ten minutes, however, they'd still not found them and the strength of their psychic signal hadn't increased markedly. In a sign of just how desperate she was to find them, Amy let the Doctor co-opt some of her psychic abilities, his expertise coupled with her ability narrowing their potential location considerably. But it still all too vague, muddled with interference from the temporally complex Dalek presence surrounding them. There was too much to search, too little time. They'd find them eventually, but unless they did it soon, they'd all be turned into human-Time Lord crisps shortly afterwards.<p>

Fifteen minutes, the sum total of the Doctor's borrowed time, passed, and still they hadn't found them. A familiar, terrifying tightness was building in Amy's chest.

They jogged down a metal catwalk, still holding hands to form the touch-conduit that allowed the Doctor to utilise the Time Lady's abilities. They were both at the limits of their desperation, their eyes searching only for any sign of the navy-blue greatcoat, a lock of flowing blonde hair, Rory's jittery walk. So much so that they barely bothered to take in their immediate surroundings.

This, as it turned out, was a big mistake.

Behind them, a loud clanging noise indicated the slamming of metal on metal. The pair spun around to see that a large metal grille had closed behind them, one that they'd completely failed to notice as they ran past. The catwalk and everything beyond it was now sealed off. They blanched simultaneously, knowing full well what was about to occur – this catwalk was long with sharp drops on either side, so the only way to leave would be to move down its length. There was no other way of escape. But if they did... the Doctor guessed they get ten metres before their way was blocked by an incoming Dalek. Permanently.

They were trapped. And this time, the Doctor had no brilliant plan for escape.

The Doctor took out his sonic, his breathing shallow as he ran it over the edge of the grate. Somehow, he knew the answer before he flicked up the sonic to inspect the result.

"Deadlock." He stated, with an air of quiet, dignified resignation and finality.

Amy didn't need to ask. She already understood. She threw herself into his embrace, immersing her senses in everything that was _him_ for the last time.

_So this is how it all ends. Exactly how you would have wanted it. Maybe not so soon, but just how you wanted it._

"_**I'm sorry, Amelia."**_ He was ready. He'd lived for centuries upon centuries, seen and borne horrors unimaginable, witnessed the universe in all its glory and all its horror. It was time for his story to end... but hers was just beginning. _How fitting that a life as dark and twisted as yours would end with one, final, terrible mistake, _he thought bitterly.

"_**I told you," **_she whispered. **_"Don't apologise."_**

And she meant it. What was there to be sorry about? Yes, he'd hurt her, more than he would ever know. But he'd never done so deliberately. And the pain was just a down payment, the price for the extraordinary, boundless joy she'd had the privilege to experience in return. With him. She'd waited, waited her whole life for him.

_**Was I worth it? **_He asked, a final, simple curious little question in her mind, like a child asking a parent if they liked the sweet little drawing they'd spent the last half hour creating.

_**Of course you were. Every single second.**_

They smiled, a smile of pure, untarnished satisfaction. Nothing mattered now. Not the anger. Not the pain. Not the darkness. Just the two of them, together, complete, at last.

_**My beautiful, magnificent Amy Pond. The girl who waited for me. Thank you, Amelia... and goodbye.**_

_**Goodbye, Doctor.**_

A sudden crackling noise, a rush of air, a creaking of metal.

"_Exterminate!"_

It was time. They breathed in their final breaths, waiting for the end. The twin strikes, one to kill their bodies, one to end their lives.

It never came.

Instead, they heard a triple crack of plasma blasters, the unmistakeable sound of rushing flame, the screaming of metal being torn asunder. Astonished, the Doctor opened his eyes to see the mangled lower half of a Dalek casing, bluish flames flickering within.

"Seriously, you two," Jack Harkness said with a roughish grin fixed on his face, stepping out from behind the flames, holding a glittering silver blaster. "_Get a room._"

* * *

><p><strong>Way to ruin the moment, Captain.<strong>

**I briefly considered ending the chapter three "paragraphs" earlier but even I'm not sufficiently evil to leave you on _that_ sort of cliffhanger. Yet.**


	21. Category Seven

**I did warn that this one would be stupid long...  
><strong>

**I am incorporating parts of S6 Amy's character into my reading of her, by the way. Just so you know.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER<strong>** 21. ****Category**** Seven:**** 3**** – ****4**** November ****2010**

The Doctor and Amy just stared at the man, completely lost for words.

_This __is... __unexpected,_ they both thought. It crossed Amy's mind that it was quite a good thing that they'd recently opened up the telepathic channel between them – at least, on a temporary basis – and the last part of their conversation had been silent. Otherwise she wouldn't have been able to look the Time Agent in the eye for days if he'd overheard _that_. Even the possibility of it caused a hot blush to creep up her neck. _Oh__ geez... __I __just __basically __told __the __Doctor __I __was... __well, __that __I __was __half... __oh __dear __oh __dear __oh __dear. __Hopefully __he__ won't__ have__ noticed._

She made well sure that her psychic barriers were firmly in place – it wouldn't do to have the Doctor seeing _those_ thoughts.

Seeing the colour moving up her cheek, Jack raised an eyebrow. "So, are you two going to let go of each other now, or should I just leave you some space and get some quiet music?" The words brought them back to reality and they disentangled themselves from each other, the Doctor clearing his throat and straightening his bowtie nervously, Amy putting her hands on her hips and giving Jack her finest death glare. Unfortunately, this just made his smile even wider.

The awkward moment was finally shattered when two figures emerged from around the still-burning Dalek 'corpse'. One hazel-eyed blonde girl, and the other a tall brown-haired man.

_Rory!_ At that moment Amy's mind cleared of all distractions, all considerations of the Doctor and escape. All she could see was her ex-fiancée, endlessly thankful that her mistake hadn't cost him his life. As she wrapped her arms around him so tightly that she could feel the beating of his single, fragile heart, she knew she would never make that mistake again.

The Doctor watched the pair hold each other in pure relief, a curious, unfathomable expression on his face. He may have _looked_ clueless and oblivious on the outside, but that was just a front. A façade to stop his companions becoming too attached – to stop himself becoming too attached to them. A defence against that dark, insidious voice lurking in the edges of his mind.

He'd learnt the hard way that he needed it. The hardest, in fact – losing his family. Losing his species, an action he alone was responsible for. Losing Rose to a parallel universe, not once but twice. Donna, her memories of him wiped for her own safety. Adric, Astrid, both killed in heroic but very much final acts of self-sacrifice. No, nothing teaches the hand about fire quite like being burnt, and he knew full well now that his human companions were fragile. Precious. More so than his blood-stained self. If he got too close, it would be their doom. And his.

Now, as he watched, he could see that Amy was seeing this, too. Or at least, was gaining a glimpse of the twisted, tortured path that he had taken. Her relief and remorse told him everything he needed to know – she'd resolved not to take one more step down that terrible road. And she wasn't human, was she? She neither wanted nor needed that kind of _protection_, did she?

Of course he'd noticed what she'd said. What she'd clearly felt. The emotions and those little pockets of her mind that were beyond words that she'd shown in him in what they'd thought were their last moments alive. At the time, he'd just been grateful that he'd gained what he didn't deserve, his last, selfish wish – that he wouldn't die alone. That he'd go out with someone who knew him, truly knew him. Someone who loved him. And that, he thought, was that.

But, thanks to an immortal man, Amy's ex-fiancée and her once-worst-enemy, they were still very much alive.

He shook his head. He couldn't think those thoughts now. And so he did what Time Lords usually did – he put it off for later.

"Right! Thanks for the timely intervention, all. Fifteen minutes to go before this place turns into a great big electric chair slash tower. Let's get out of this trash can."

* * *

><p>It turned out that having had no genuine idea where they were <em>actually<em> going and having been delayed by several small Dalek patrols, Jack, Rory and Katherine hadn't actually gone very far from the junction where they'd initially gotten lost.

This was an enormous stroke of luck, because by the time they found the junction again there was just over ten minutes remaining, and they had to sprint and pray to have any hope of reaching the exit before several million watts of current melted every single cell in their bodies. They galloped along another long downward ramp, the space suddenly opening right up around them into a large, open room, empty aside from numerous wide steel columns evidently designed to support the upper levels, and they saw it. A rectangle, in the distance, made of shining sunlight. They'd made it, with mere minutes to spare.

Amy punched the air, whooping joyously as they ran between the steel pillars that dotted the open ground floor for the exit and safety. Her triumph, however, was short-lived, and ended in the cylindrical metal form of a Dalek materialising in front of them. This one was at least a foot larger than those they'd defeated above, and was bright orange in colour, gleaming in the light streaming through the doorway. Another materialised. And another. And another.

"_The__ Doctor__ and__ his__ companions __are__ trapped!__"_ A mechanical, distorted voice called out from the central Dalek as more continued to teleport in. _"__Exterminate!__"_

Soon, a dozen orange Daleks were spread in a line before them. They instantly dived behind the nearest steel columns for cover as twelve shining beams of light pierced the air, crackling as they struck metal, showering the black concrete floor with sparks.

Amy, Jack, Rory and Katherine returned the salvo once the beams vanished, the Doctor helping boost their power with the sonic. The central Dalek, the one that had spoken, exploded under their concentrated fire, but they could see that this would take too long, as they ducked behind the steel columns to avoid the next volley of deadly light. It'd take, on average, twenty seconds to kill each Dalek. There were eleven to kill. Ten now. That made just over three minutes... and they had two.

The Doctor met Amy's eye, shaking his head slightly, sadly. The game was up.

Amy refused to acknowledge the gesture. _No.__ NO.__ I__ am__ not__ giving__ up.__ Not__ now. __Not__ when__ we're__ so__ close.__ Not__ when__ we've __almost__ saved__ them.__ Saved__ him._ She turned and fired another ball of plasma at another Dalek, causing it to burst into flames. In the process, another twenty seconds had gone. Ninety remaining. A tear began to form in her eye, stinging, and she rubbed it away furiously.

It wasn't fair. It simply wasn't fair. She'd come all this way, she'd come so close to saving them and now they were all going to die, in sight of escape. Rory would die, because of her. The Doctor would die because of her. If she hadn't run off to save Rory, he would've had plenty of time to escape on his own. _She_ had dragged him along with her. It wasn't fair.

_"__**Do**__** you**__** hear**__** me?**__** NOT. **__**BLOODY.**__** FAIR.**__**" **_

She hadn't meant to scream, but she couldn't help it, couldn't control it any more, her frustration, guilt and rage at herself breaking through all the dams she'd built to bottle them inside.

At once, silence fell. The deadly beams of light vanished. No one moved, no one made a sound. The Daleks were still, docile, harmless.

Jack turned his head to try and establish why they'd stopped firing. He poked his head beyond the steel column, presenting a perfect target for the assembly of killing machines in front of him. Nothing happened. They were still clearly alive, judging by the glow within their eyestalks, just perfectly happy to hold their fire.

_As__ if__ they've __been __ordered __to_... a sudden suspicion gripped his mind, related to that exclamation in that strange, ornate language he'd just heard. He turned to Amy, who was still pressed against the steel column next to him.

"What on _earth_ did you just say to them?" he asked her, his voice quiet, equal parts shock and suspicion.

The Time Lady seemed affronted. "Nothing. Just yelled at them. Must've said it in Gallifreyean, sorry.."

"That's the thing, Amy... I think they've stopped. They're harmless. Something's happened to them."

"The hell do you mean?" she snapped, twisting around to see the evidence for herself. Again, her head presented a perfect target for the Daleks to fire at, but again they chose not to. They just stayed absolutely still, completely benign. She stared bemusedly at them for several seconds before realisation hit her with the force of a meteor. "Oh no... oh no no no," she whispered, her hands trembling, her face white. "How... how did that..."

"Sixty seconds!" The Doctor suddenly called out behind them. "You've dealt with the Daleks, right? Right! Let's go!" Out of nowhere, he grabbed the Time Lady's hand and pulled her towards the exit, running as quickly as he'd ever run in his long, long life.

The five of them had made it less than ten metres beyond the entrance, sprinting over the rocky, blasted ground of Kappamarine when an explosion tore through the upper portion of the steel edifice behind them and a blue, electrical shimmer ran down the sides, waterfalls of gold-white sparks cascading from the gaping wounds in its steel surface.

They didn't stop running until they were safely enclosed within the familiar confines of the blue police box over a mile from the destroyed drill.

* * *

><p>They were all draped or leaning over various parts of the console room, panting – quite hard in the case of the humans, without the benefit of a double circulatory system to help push blood around. The Doctor threw the flight lever and the TARDIS dematerialised from Kappamarine, reappearing in some distant, safe void between galaxies.<p>

"So that's it, yeah? Those Dalek thingies are all dead now?" Katherine asked as she leaned against the door, still quite out of breath.

"Yes, yes, the Daleks are all gone. And hopefully won't come back," the Doctor replied distractedly, running his fingers through his unkempt hair. "Sorry that had to be your first outing, I know I did promise you a holiday resort planet, not a run-in with the most evil creations in history."

She waved him off. "Don't worry, it was a blast. It'll take a bit of getting-used-to, the almost dying bit, but hey, we survived, didn't we?"

"Yes," he murmured softly. "Yes, thanks to Amy." His eyes searched the console room for Amy, looking for those fierce green eyes, that mane of shining red hair.

But she had already gone.

* * *

><p>Amy sat wedged between the door and the wall of the blue-carpeted room, shivering, her mind overloaded with conflicting emotions. The moment they'd reached the TARDIS she'd dashed up the stairs, headed straight for her room, told the TARDIS to hide her and deadlocked the door with her sonic phone. Right now, she needed a little bit of time, a little bit of space for herself.<p>

_And__ time__ and__ space __is __one __thing __I __still__ have, _she thought amidst the maelstrom of emotions swirling in her modified Time Lord brain.

_Relief_. Rory was alive, and safe. _Determination._ There was no way she would let him be anything else ever again. _Sadness,__ loss_. That would mean he had to leave the TARDIS immediately, that their relationship was over.

But those were the emotions she'd been grappling with for the best part of two hours now, and if Amelia Pond was good at anything, it was dealing with her emotions in quick order. Yes, it tore her hearts to lose him. Yes, she felt terrible about everything she'd done to their relationship. Done to him. But she was a strong girl, so very strong. She'd deal with it. So long as he was safe, and alive, she could live with herself. She thought.

_And __it's __not __like __I __won't __ever__ see __him __again,__ will__ I?__ Any__time __I __want,__ I__ can __just__ drop __into __Leadworth__ for__ a __cup__ of__ tea._ Even in the privacy of her own mind the words sounded hollow, empty, no replacement for what she'd lost, but there was no other way. Cold comfort was still better than no comfort at all.

No, the raging storm brewing within her wasn't to do with that at all. Rather, it was something else she'd done. Another, decidedly more terrifying, act.

_They're __the __most__ evil__ beings __in __existence,_ she reasoned. _They__ deserved __it. __And __I __didn't __have __any__ other __choice. __We __were __minutes__ – __seconds __away __from__ dying.__ All__ of __us__ – __except __Jack, __I __guess. __It's __not __like __I __really __tried __to, __either, __it __just __sort __of... __happened.__ So__ it __was __just __luck __that __it __happened, __and__ I __didn't __have __any __choice __either __way. __I __had __to __do__ it._

_But __he __wouldn't __have,_ a voice answered. _You __know __he__ wouldn't__ have.__ He__ would__ never __have __done__ anything__ like__ that._

_Maybe __not,_ she conceded, _but__ he'll__ understand.__ OK,__ maybe __he'll__ tell__ me__ off,__ yell__ at __me__ a __bit, __but __once __he's __gotten __the __message __across, __he'll __smile __and __forgive __me, __telling __me__ it's __OK. __Because __he__ knows __me, __and__ he __cares __for __me._

_Yes,__ he__would_, the voice stated in agreement, but it wasn't done. _That's __hardly __the __point, __is __it? __He__ does __that __because __he's __a __kind __man. __A __good __man. __A__ wonderful __man. __But __Amelia __Pond... __the __girl__ who__ murders __people__ because__ she's__ angry,__ the__ girl__ who__ claims__ to__ value__ the__ sanctity__ of__ her__ mind __above __everything __else...__ then__ without__ a __second__ thought __uses__ and__ dominates __the __mind__ of__ others __for __her __own__ benefit._

_To __save__ lives!_

_So? _The voice replied dismissively. Her voice._ You__ know __it's __true.__ So__ what__ does__ that__ make__ us__ now?_

She didn't have an answer. She couldn't answer. She sighed, closing her eyes and resting her head on the door. All she wanted now was for this god-forsaken, heart-shredding day to end at last.

* * *

><p>"So where is she now?" Rory, sipping his tea.<p>

It was the morning after their escape from Kappamarine. They had all traipsed off their own rooms soon afterwards, far too physically – and in Rory's case, emotionally – spent to do anything on that day. Rory was so worn out that he hadn't even managed to find his and Amy's room, and had staggered into the library, resting on the soft, warm armchairs. After a deep, dreamless sleep, he awoke and dragged himself back into the console room, determined to find and see Amy, gain as much quality time with her as he could before his enforced exit. Instead, he found the Doctor and Katherine, evidently waiting for him.

The three had then retired to one of the many lounge rooms of the TARDIS, hustled there by the Doctor on the basis that there was something important he needed to say. He'd poured them all a mug of tea, then directed them all to the couches whilst he fetched something. He returned a few minutes later, holding a large, leather-bound red book.

"In her bedroom, apparently," the Doctor replied. "The reason you couldn't find it last night is because she told the TARDIS to hide it. She's deadlocked the door, by the way, so don't bother heading up there – you won't be able to get in."

Rory looked at the Time Lord suspiciously. "How do you know that?"

"Because she's showing me, right now-"

"-psychically?" The note of jealousy came instinctively, borne out of years upon years of being forced to second best to a man he never thought had ever existed. Well, he existed alright, and now he was giving his precious Amy Pond to him, but he couldn't help be protective, cautious on her behalf.

"Yes. Not how you're thinking, though, all she's showing me is where she is and that she's deadlocked the room, nothing else, and I physically – or, erm, psychically, rather – can't find out anything else now that she doesn't want me to. I think the message is pretty obvious, though. She wants some downtime to herself."

Katherine nodded. "She looked like she'd been through the wringer as we came into the TARDIS. I reckon give her a day or two, she'll be alright," she declared, trusting that her intuition would lead her true.

"I suspect so. Out of interest, why do you care so much? Not to be rude, or dismissive, or anything," he added quickly, "Just curious. I mean, she hasn't exactly given you many reasons to be friendly – there must be something else."

The blonde shrugged. "It's pretty simple. I treated her like shit when she was a kid. Now I'm trying to make up for it. If I have to cop a bit in return, well, fair's fair."

The Doctor smiled warmly. "The important thing is that you're trying. That's what counts."

She chuckled. "That's nice to know. I'm not exactly expecting a sudden turn-around, though. Stubborn girl is Amy Pond."

"You're right about that."

"So..." She set her mug on the table. "What gives? What's so important that you need to drag us down here for a chat?"

"What, don't you like the tea?"

"The tea's fine. But you still dragged us down here. I don't like being dragged places, Doctor, unless there's a good reason. So come on now."

"Alright. Although to be frank this is mostly for Rory's benefit, unless you're going to be staying on the TARDIS for longer-"

"Which I am."

The Doctor looked at the blonde in surprise. "Are you sure? You've seen how dangerous it is, Katherine, and I don't want to be standing over anyone's grave any time soon."

She flicked her wrist dismissively. "Meh. So long as you, Amy and Jack are around, they could send an army our way and we'd get home in time for supper."

He smiled appreciatively – he had to admit, he did like having her around. And Amy could use a female friend to confide in... once they actually to that stage, of course.

"Fair enough. Alright then, you're both going to need to hear this."

"But I'm not staying," Rory pointed out. "I can't stay. Amy won't let me."

He flinched and closed his eyes, knowing the suffering that lay behind the words. "I know. What I'm about to tell you is _why_ Amy won't let you. Why she's so scared that she might do something terrible to you if you stay. You deserve to know."

"This has something to do with Amy's psychic abilities, right?" Katherine asked shrewdly. The Doctor turned to the girl, astonished.

"How on earth did you know that?"

"Rory and I have already talked about it. She's already given me a glimpse of what she can do."

"Well, today, yes."

"Before today."

A pause. "What do you mean?"

She hesitated. _He__ doesn't __know? __Why __doesn't__ he __know? __What __other __secrets __is __she __keeping __from __him? _

She made an executive decision. "Not important. But let's just say Rory and I already have an inkling of what she's capable of, and it's messy. Don't worry, she didn't actually hurt anyone," she added carefully, hoping that that would cover the unspoken truth that she had certainly _threatened_ to.

"Right," the Doctor said slowly. "Do you know the, erm, specifics?"

"Of what she's capable of? No," Rory answered.

"Right. So the Cliff-Notes summary is this. A few millenia back the Time Lords invented a scale of telepathic power, from one to seven..." Rory and Katherine blinked as he spoke, taking in the explanation of Time Lord psychic categorisation systems, not a subject they'd thought they'd be hearing about. "And seven?" Rory asked, when he had finished.

"Ah, yes, well. Seven is a curious category. It was originally just a junk category the Time Lords invented because they felt it kind of poncey to all be occupying the top drawers as category fives and sixes, so they invented a new one on top. It has a full description and rules for what makes a telepath a category seven, but that was just because they were pedantic buggers back in the day, and they wanted to make sure their system _looked_ right, so no vague wishy-washy definitions. They didn't actually expect that one would ever show up, and I assumed they were right. Everyone did."

"Let me guess," Katherine drawled, "Amy is the first?"

"The first and only. It's an absurdly unlikely and unique set of circumstances that's led to this. First she had to grow up with a time crack in her wall, so the raw time energy could start to change her brain – that's what bumped her up to a four in the first place. Then someone – namely, me – had to come along and close the crack before it started to cause DNA corruption. Then, she had to get transformed into a Time Lord, which involves a set of circumstances so extraordinarily unlikely that even I didn't know it was possible. And it won't be happening again, as you know. Not least because without the protection of the Time energy in her brain, she would probably have been blown to smithereens by the regeneration energy."

Rory shuddered. "That's comforting."

"Well, it is in a way, because she turned out fine afterwards. Not only that, but the reaction between the time energy and the regeneration energy caused a runaway acceleration in the development of her brain, which meant that by the time the regeneration processes ended in her, she had a substantially more powerful brain than usual for Time Lords. Energetic stuff, pure time. Reacts in all sorts of strange and unexpected ways when it's in that form and you mix something else with it."

"And this was enough to make her a... super-telepath, I think you called her?"

"That's the official designation, yes. That wouldn't be _quite_ enough by itself, but remember: this is Amelia Pond we're talking about. She was already mentally very, very strong beforehand, just because of who she is. Willpower, intellect, obduracy – it all counts up here," he told them, tapping his finger against his temple.

"Alright, then. She's a category seven telepath. Now care to explain what it means? I'm guessing that's why you got the book out?" Katherine was more perceptive than her blonde locks suggested.

"Got it in one. Here, listen." He opened the book up to a page marked in strange, circular symbols, of the same type that dotted the TARDIS walls. He ran his finger down the page, evidently searching for the correct section. "Category seven... category seven... ah. Here." He began to read aloud in a firm, slightly monotone voice.

"'Category seven, or super-telepaths, possess all the abilities of category six telepaths, and also possess some or all of the following' – in this case, best go for the 'all' bit," he added, before continuing. "'The ability to create impenetrable external psychic barriers, the ability to interface remotely with other telepaths over almost any temporal or spatial distance' – so she can talk to me and any other telepaths in our heads, wherever or whenever she is, so long as our time-streams are in sync – 'large-scale hypnotic and other psychic domination abilities, up to and including complete and total control of any unshielded mind."

He hesitated before continuing. "Finally, super-telepaths have the ability to launch psychic attacks on other psychically active beings. These attacks, at full strength, can be fatal to all but those with the powerful psychic barriers. To date no super-telepaths... yada yada ya. So that's it. That's basically what she's capable of."

Rory and Katherine sat in stunned silence for a minute, shocked at the revelation of what the energetic, flirty redhead was truly capable of.

"She... she can _kill_ people? Just by thinking it?" Rory whispered.

The Doctor swallowed. "She's capable of it, yes."

"Why didn't you tell me this before?" Rory demanded, his voice beginning to quiver. The Doctor looked away, guilt glinting in his cerulean eyes.

"I didn't want you worrying about it... evidently, that was a mistake."

"Yes, yes it was." His voice was low, quiet, his clenched fists shaking, his knuckles bone-white.

"Rory, I'm sorry. I truly, genuinely, am sorry. If there was another way to do this, I would find it, but I can't see it. She can't see it."

"But if she's in control, there's no danger to me, right?"

The Doctor still couldn't meet the man's eyes, couldn't bear to see the sudden flare of hope that had lit up within, knowing that he was about to crush it. "That's what I'd hoped... but evidently, she knows she isn't. She's unstable. You saw it today. She didn't _mean_ to mind-control those Daleks. But she was incredibly scared, incredibly angry, and incredibly sad, and after everything that had happened today, it simply burst out. I felt it instantly."

"Why? _Why is this happening?_" Rory's control was breaking, sheer frustration, helplessness and a boiling sensation in his throat overriding his good sense.

"I don't know. Rory, I honestly don't know. There's something – _something_ – she's locked up in her mind. Something big, something terrible – traumatic. I have no idea what it is." _Well,_ he thought, _other __than __it__ involves __a __lot__ of__ white._ "But I'm trying everything I can to get to the bottom of it. I promise you, Rory Williams, I am doing everything in my power to find out what this is, and why she's locked it away. But until I find out, until I convince her to unlock her mind, she's unstable. Minds, especially psychic minds, aren't meant to be chopped up into little separate rooms like that. They're meant to be kept whole, free. The harder she tries to close off a piece of it, the more unstable she'll become, the less control she has over her own abilities. When she's scared, or angry, it'll burst out, and then..."

Rory gazed at the Time Lord, studying him, reading his face for a lie or an exaggeration. At last, he nodded, convinced that this time, at least, he had told the truth. "Alright. OK. So I have to go. Right. Fine. OK then. If you don't mind, I'm going to see her one last time. Assuming she doesn't kill me, of course," he added bitterly, standing suddenly, robotically.

"Rory, we can always drop in whenever – Rory, wait!" He called after him, but Rory had already marched out of the room, his footsteps echoing down the corridor. He sighed and rested his head on his palms, a ball of misery in his stomach at the state that he'd left them all in.

"He'll be fine," Katherine told him soothingly. "He's a strong bloke. He just needs a little time, that's all."

_Don't __we __all?_ "Katherine, now that you know the truth, if you want to leave at any time, you're welcome to do so. I won't stop you."

"Hell no. I'd already figured the gist of it out myself, thanks. All you've done is fill in the details and given me all the jargon. I'll stay with Rory for a few weeks after we get back to Leadworth, so he has someone he can talk to, but I'll be back after that."

"But the Precept-"

"-weren't chasing me in 2010, and I'd already moved to London in January of that year. It'll be fine, it's only for a couple of weeks. And after that... I was promised all of time and space, Mr Time Lord. I expect to get it."

He smiled softly. "Yeah, I guess that's the one thing I'm good at giving people."

* * *

><p><em>To an outsider, it would look as if the city was at the height of its splendour. The walls now stretched and twisted outwards into the countryside for miles around, the citizens relishing the staggering amount of living space their Queen had suddenly bequeathed them<em>

_The expansion had started some time ago, without warning. To the enemies, it was an aggressive move, a deliberate growth of the city's already immense power as the reach of the walls extended all around it. As the walls grew, so did the city's strength, the ever-increasing numbers of red and blue flags proudly announcing the city's infinite power, cannons and barricades increasing exponentially, turning the city into an indomitable fortress from without._

_From within, however..._

_The Queen works at the base, her calloused hands bruised and her back aching in the fierce midsummer sun, as she places yet another stone on yet another wall. For the truth is that she does not care for the outsiders, their fears, plans, and suspicions. She has no thought for them. She isn't expanding towards them._

_No. She's running._

_No one knew how. No one knew why. But that disease, that stain that had begun from the city's innermost depths was unmistakeable. Someone, somehow, had cracked the defences of the Room. It shouldn't have been possible. Indeed, she suspected that their actions had merely been the last pinprick to pop an over-inflated balloon, but it doesn't matter now._

_The white terror was spreading. As it grew, as it multiplied, so the city's power multiplied with it. The walls she builds now are somehow even stronger than before, flawless, indestructible. Wide enough to hold entire armies on their breadth, their battlements an intimidating display of the majesty and the total, complete dominance the Queen enjoys over her external rivals._

_However, she does not stop to enjoy it for one second, for as the whiteness grows, so does the Queen's fear. So she runs and she builds. She can't build fast enough. The whiteness is spreading too fast._

_But she has no choice._

* * *

><p>Amy awoke suddenly, disoriented. Her eyes darted around, registered smears of blue all around her. After a few seconds, her vision cleared – amazingly, she had fallen sleep still wedged against her bedroom door.<p>

There was a soft knocking above her head.

She frowned. _Didn't I deadlock the door? Didn't I show him psychically me deadlocking it? Why doesn't he listen to me?_

"Amy, can you open up? It's me. Or do you not want to see me now?" The sadness in the familiar voice was unmistakable.

_Rory!_ She shot up and removed the deadlock with her sonic, wrenching the door open and pulling her ex-fiancée into a crushing hug. She wanted to apologise, for every injustice, every insult, every callous remark she'd ever hurled at him, knowing that he'd taken it all as part of the package that was her. _And now it's gone. It's all gone forever._

There was nothing more to say. Nothing more to do. She'd wronged him enough.

_No more._

"I understand, Amy," he whispered in her ear. "I really, really understand. I'm not angry at you. At all."

**_"You should be,"_** she whispered, unknowingly slipping into her genetically-ingrained second language. The tears began to flow, hot, thick, burning trails of grief scarring her pale cheeks. "Rory?"

"Yes, Amelia?" His own voice was trembling, his control wavering, buffeted by the winds of despair surrounding them.

_He used my real name... that's the first time he's used my real name in years... the first time since I told him not to..._

She couldn't speak. All her words, all her strength, all her flirtatiousness, her wittiness, her cockiness, had melted away from her. Along the man she'd once hoped to call her own. What could she do? What could she say?

She broke away from him slightly, and looked into those beautiful, clear, innocent eyes again.

An idea suddenly struck her. She wouldn't say anything.

She wouldn't need to.

She placed a hand on his face, her long, slender fingers brushing his temple, and closed her eyes.

_**Rory Williams, can you hear me?**_

He gasped, his hand clapping against hers, pressing it into his cheek. "Is that... was that... you?"

_**Yes. It's me, Rory. Come with me. I want to... want to show you something.**_

And she did. Flashes of images and emotions flowed through his mind, flickering in his consciousness. Incoherent, distant, as if he was viewing frames from a slide projector through a muddy widow. Pictures of Leadworth,_ of me...? She's showing me pictures of myself?_

The images kept coming, and the emotions became clearer. The more she showed him, the more it began to make sense. He was holding her hand as she shook violently, biting her lip, holding back tears that she so badly needed to fall. He was standing in front of her, defending her honour from a sneering, flint-eyed man whose shoulders were twice the width of his. He was placing a hand on her forehead, wiping cold sweat off her pale brow as she tried to recover from an experiment gone much too far.

The more she showed him, the more he understood.

At last, the flow of images and emotions stopped, and her face returned to his vision. The clear, flame-curtained face, the soft curve of her cheeks, the slight part of her strawberry-red lips. She looked more beautiful that he had ever seen her. He looked into those sparkling, vivid green eyes as they opened, and heard four words in his mind. Four words, that together with the cascade of memories she'd given him just the merest glimpse into, told him more than a million ever would. Ever could. Would ever need to. He heard them resonate through his mind, simple, plain, clear as a bell.

He pulled her in for one final, desperate kiss, her hand wrapping around the base of his neck to deepen it in a mirror of his own. They held together, lips locked, needing each other, absorbing everything that was the other in a fit of passion borne from everything they'd shared, every laugh they'd laughed together, every smile they'd given each other, every dark night they'd stolen together. A moment more intense than anything either had experienced ever before.

_**Thank you, Rory Williams.**_

* * *

><p><strong>Rory'll<strong>** be**** around.**


	22. The Note In The Box

**Talky-talky (with some, um, extras near the end), featuring the last we'll see of our human trio for a while. This one ISN'T 6000 words long, though. The original plan for this included Katherine and Jack staying onboard but a reviewer then suggested that I leave them off for a while, so I drafted this. And found that I liked it a hell of a lot more than the original (and others agree). Moral: review, because it does genuinely lead to a better story.  
><strong>

**I honestly didn't plan to have Amy hand over the sonic phone until ten seconds before I wrote it. Bizarre how that happens.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 22. The Note In The Box: 4 – 30 November 2010<strong>

"You're not serious."

"What, don't you like it?" the Doctor asked Rory, bemused.

Rory just stared, agape, at the gleaming décor of the blood-red Jaguar E-Type.

"But... that's my favourite car. How did you know that was my favourite car?"

"Well, you showed me a picture a few weeks back and said '_that's my favourite car'."_

He shook his head in disbelief and walked past the gleaming automobile, pushing open the garden gate. He opened the door to the house, stepping into the porch of the house. His house. It was still warm and inviting, heated by the sparkling light of the bright June sun... the 26th of June. The day he and Amy were supposed to have gotten married. He tried to force the thought to one side.

_It's time to move on, Rory Williams._

It would be difficult, of course... there wasn't really anyone in his life that could replace Amy. To be honest, he'd never really considered it – his entire life, he'd only had eyes for the sharp-tongued ginger-and-now-alien. But he'd promised...

* * *

><p>"<em>Promise me, Rory, that you'll find someone," <em>she'd told him after they'd finally broken the kiss. _"Someone who deserves someone as special, as perfect, as amazing as you. Someone who isn't selfish, who won't hurt you, like I am._"

"_Amy, you aren't-"_

"_Promise me, Rory. Please."_

He'd looked deep into her eyes, and saw that the flame that usually lit within them when she looked at him had extinguished, leaving them, sad, dull, _empty_. _"I promise."_

* * *

><p>"So..." Amy began, utterly lost for words.<p>

"So this is it."

"Don't worry, stupid-face," she laughed sadly, punching him lightly on the arm. "You're not completely rid of me yet. We'll drop by whenever we damn well please, so look out on Easters and Christmases. And weekends. And weekdays. Hell, just be on the lookout, because you never know when we might drop by."

He smiled wanly at her. "Of course."

She bit her lip and threw her arms around him, squeezing his chest into her briefly, tightly. Before he knew it she had broken off and was gazing at him, her face expressionless.

"I want you to have this," she told him, lifting his hand and placing something in his open palm. A block like-device, wires trailing all around it, the outlines of phone visible within, a sparkling amethyst crystal fixed to the end.

_Her sonic phone_.

"Amy, but-"

"Shut up. I'm getting a proper sonic screwdriver from the TARDIS when I get back, don't worry. But I want you to have this, because I've fixed it so it has the TARDIS permanently locked on. Wherever we are, whenever we are, you just call us and I promise you, whatever you want, whatever you need, I'll be there."

He smiled again, but there was no happiness in it. "And here I was thinking you _weren't_ my girlfriend any more."

Tears briefly glistened in her eyes but she blinked them away. "No. No, I'm not. But even so, you're still important, so important to me. You're the family I never really had. Whenever I needed someone, you were there. It's only fair that I return the favour."

He placed his other hand on hers, pressing down on it and the sonic phone. "See you around, Pond."

"Same to you, Williams. Don't get too friendly with Broad in the interim."

And before he knew it she was gone, vanishing from his sight, from his life, as if she had simply dissolved into thin air, leaving the Doctor, Rory and Katherine (who was busy admiring the car) in her wake. He was about to turn and head inside, and make the first tentative step into his new life, when a sudden urge struck him.

"Doctor, can I talk to you for a moment?"

The man smiled wanly at him. "Whatever you need."

He nodded briskly. "I'll get to the point. I know what's going on between you and Amy."

A flash of annoyance crossed the Time Lord's face. "Rory, I promise you, I-"

"Be quiet, Doctor. I know you didn't mean to, that you genuinely didn't mean to steal her hearts away, that you were trying to make sure that we could be together. But it happened anyway, and it's probably for the best – it's pretty bloody obvious now that the moment she became an alien, our engagement was over."

"Rory, I'm-"

"You're sorry. I know that. I wasn't asking for your pity or your apologies. I'm just telling you this – you want her, in your heart. Or hearts, rather. She wants you. She won't admit it, she might not know it, but I've known her since she was seven. She lets on more than she knows. And do you know what?"

The Time Lord opened his mouth to try and respond, to rebuke, to explain, but the words simply wouldn't come out. The young man didn't wait.

"You can have her. I'm giving her to you. Besides which, she waited for you her entire life, and you two are the last of your species. Maybe it was meant to be." He chuckled sadly, a laughed tinged with bitter loss. "But hear this. Hurt her, take advantage of her... and you'll have me to answer to, even if you're a billion years in the future and a billion light years away. Do you understand me?" His eyes burned with a bright, piercing light the Doctor hadn't witnessed within them previously.

He nodded. He knew, of course, that if the above did happen, Rory would never get to him... he'd have dealt with himself first. He knew, deep within his bones, that he'd sacrifice himself to save her. And that he would never, ever live with himself if he hurt her deliberately.

"Good. Sorry if I was blunt," he added suddenly, the light vanishing, his hands suddenly wringing themselves awkwardly, "I just wanted to make sure I got the message across."

"Rory, I understand. I completely understand. And I'm sorry. This entire business, this entire – bloody – _situation_ is my fault. This _should_ have been your wedding day, but I ruined it. Just like I ruined her. Just like I ruin everyone..." he trailed off, his eyes glazing over, bitterness dripping from every word.

Despite the stabbing of jealousy and anger he felt towards the man, Rory's natural compassion was irrepressible. "That's in the past now," he said softly. "Just remember your mistakes and you won't repeat them again."

"If only it were that simple... but thank you. You're a good man, Rory Williams."

"So are you," Rory said, without _why_ he was saying it. "Even if you don't look it at times. One more thing."

"Yes?"

"I know you two are telepathic and all, and can sense each other's emotions and all that, but even so: stay _out_ of her head, Doctor. Seriously. You will _not_ like what you find in there."

And with that, he was gone, the wooden door thudding shut behind him.

"Farewell, Rory Williams," he murmured, the last warning still ringing in his ears. "I'm sorry it had to be this way."

* * *

><p>Katherine was still gawping at the vintage car parked in front of the house when the gate swung open for a second time, the Doctor strolling through, a faraway, distracted expression on his face.<p>

"So he didn't hurt you? Funny, Rory was always seriously protective of Amy. Would've thought he wouldn't have been best pleased with you, stealing her away like that."

"Yes, well, it's not like any of us had any choice. I feel just as bad about it as they do. This whole thing is my fault, after all."

"Self-flagellation won't get you anywhere, Doctor. Although I guess it helps with the sympathy vote."

He laughed softly – Katherine certainly had a way of cutting through the tension. "You think he'll be OK? Rory?"

"Oh, he'll be fine. He's got me around, after all. It'll take him a bit, but he'll move on. He's a strong bloke, as I told you. Although how are we getting around the whole wedding thing? That was supposed to happen... well, right now," she told him, glancing at her watch.

"Jack's work. Retcon. Ask him if you want the details."

"I'll do that. He's supposed to return here in about half an hour anyway."

He smiled at her, grateful that at least there was at least one person here he hadn't wronged permanently. _Speaking of which..._ "Where's Amy?"

"She went straight inside. She didn't look too happy... poor girl. Best give her some space for a while."

He nodded, fully intending to do precisely that. He strode over to the police box and opened the door. "So, see you in a few weeks, yeah?"

"Yep. 1st of September, here, noon. 2010, in case you forget. Be there, be square, Come back when Amy's ready. Try not too have too many adventures whilst Jack and I are gone, though."

He chuckled. "You're serious about wanting to see the universe sort of thing, aren't you?"

"Damn straight I am. Spent my whole life pretending you weren't real, but you give a girl a taste of that, and what do you reckon she's gonna do?"

"Fair enough. Catch you in September, then." He closed the TARDIS door behind him and turned to find Amy standing at the console, examining a brand-new sonic screwdriver in her fingertips, identical to his own save for the deep crimson light at the end, rather than green.

"So you finally saw the light, eh?" He joked, trying to lift the sombre blanket that had fallen throughout the TARDIS in the last few hours.

"Still not quite convinced yet, but we'll see," she answered brightly. She turned to look at him, and her face with lit with that wry, quirky smile that was so familiar – but then he saw the eyes. Their green depths were so empty, so bereft of the fire that usually burned within her, so... _dead._

_My Amelia Pond... what have I done to you?_

"Anyway," she continued in that same cheery voice that if not for her eyes would have convinced him completely, "Where to next?"

His eyebrows shot up. _What happened to needing a bit of time and space?_ "Er – are you sure? You don't want a-"

"I had _five_ hours sleep last night, Doctor. Time's-a-wastin', and that's no good at all, even when you've got buckets of the stuff. So come on. Where to next?"

He gave her another brief, considering glance, and seeing that she clearly wouldn't change her mind, decided to play along. He clapped his hands together, skipping up the steps to the console, flicking switches as he danced around the central column. "Let's go somewhere nice, shall we? First moon of Aplanta, a planet-sized museum of containing replicas the finest natural wonders of the Andromeda Galaxy. And no Daleks or drills there, either – I've checked. How about it?"

Amy grinned at him – although the smile _still_ didn't reach her eyes. "Sounds wonderful, Doctor."

"Thought you might like it. No time to lose, then!" He threw a lever and the TARDIS shuddered, the floor vibrating as it dematerialised from Leadworth.

* * *

><p>The Doctor had been true to his word, and taken them straight to Aplanta. They'd spent just over a week there, frolicking in the silvery-blue waters of the inch-perfect replica of the Great Pools of Theseus, gazing awestruck over the swirling sapphire mists at the base three-mile-high Heavenly Waterfall and lying peacefully, hand in hand, in verdant fields of golden and crimson glass, feeling the gentle ambling of the wind through the Fields of Pelori.<p>

But it wasn't enough. Amy needed more. Wanted more. Anything to avoid dealing with the crippling desolation that was devouring her from within. That sickening _emptiness_ that had begun the moment she'd broken that final kiss. She hadn't really appreciated just how much Rory had meant to her, how integral he had become to her life, how intertwined he was with her own heartstrings, how much she _needed _him... until now that he was gone.

So she pushed the Doctor harder, more insistently, to take them to ever more amazing, more beautiful, more stunning places. _What better distraction, _she thought, _than all of time and space?_ So after Aplanta, they moved on to yet more astonishing destinations – the Trojan Gardens at their greatest. Apalapucia at its zenith. Kappamarine, again, but this time in its Dalek-free heyday. And that was just in the first three weeks.

It didn't work. They couldn't adventure non-stop, after all – they had to eat, sleep, and rest. But the moment they stopped moving, stopped adventuring, stopped admiring the universe around them, her thoughts automatically turned inwards, to the sense of total loneliness building with in.

It wasn't that she was guilty about what she'd done to him, even though she was. It wasn't that she upset over the ending of their relationship, though she definitely had been for a while. She was a strong girl and she'd gotten over it in _that_ sense. She'd never exactly been one to pine over ex-boyfriends – though she didn't exactly have many – and the intense _wanting_ of him had long since vanished. It wasn't that she felt lost and confused either, trying to work out what her now-unstable abilities meant for her, even though that constantly played on her mind. No. She hadn't fully worked those things out, but she could package them neatly and lock them away in some corner of her mind, and she didn't let it affect her. So that wasn't it.

No. This was loneliness. Pure and simple. The TARDIS, the bigger-on-the-inside box just seemed so _empty_ now.

It was worst at night, like right now. Every night, before she drifted into a restless, white-flecked, truncated sleep, she was acutely aware of how large the bed was with only her alone, how cold it felt without strong arms wrapped around her, how silent it was without someone else's laughter filling the room.

She's known this feeling before. Loneliness in one form of another had been a universal constant of her life for as long as she could remember. But this _emptiness_ was different, and terrifying. This complete detachment, this impenetrable veil between her and everyone else in her life. She'd felt this once before, a few years ago. Only, _that_ time, it was a veil of her own making, the results of a path she had chosen in her arrogance and despair. And _that_ time it had come close to killing her from within. But back then she still had Rory, even if for months she refused to acknowledge it.

This time it wasn't a veil between her and the others in her life. It was that there _was_ no other in her life. There was no Rory, she had banished him from her life forever. There were no friends she could talk to – she almost wished Jack and Katherine, as much as she still bore lingering resentment towards the blonde, were still on board, just so she could have someone her age to chat with. It didn't occur to her that all she needed to do was ask and the Doctor would pick them up straight away, heading back the pre-assigned date and location the girl had given him. There was no parent she could turn to, no shoulder there for her to cry on in her time of uttermost need. She was alone, so very, very alone...

..._except for the Doctor._

She still couldn't work out her own feelings towards him after their not-so-final conversation that extraordinary day on Kappamarine. Had it really been, as her intuition told her, an implicit admission of deep, lasting love? Running both ways? She couldn't work it out. Even on her own behalf she didn't know. Didn't really want to know – because finding out would involve searching within herself for the answer, and _that_ would involve facing the nothingness within... the _whiteness_.

She'd seen it. Got a glimpse. _How the hell is it getting out? Why is it getting out? Why aren't my barriers working?  
><em>

It just made her even more determined to not think about it at every opportunity.

She'd stubbornly refused to deal with it for weeks now, preferring instead to sit and wait, alone, hoping that some epiphany would come to her and solve all her problems. It didn't come, of course, and she admonished herself for being so bloody stupid, but she didn't know anything else. So she just lay in bed, staring at the deep blue ceiling, feeling oblivion creeping through her.

After a few hours of lying still, she sighed tiredly. She wouldn't be able to get to sleep for hours anyway. And when she did, she knew her dreams would be entirely unpleasant, a mixture of guilt-ridden nightmares about Rory, abstract manifestations of her own crippling loneliness, or, worst of all, flickers of pure white and even occasionally the glint of a piercing obsidian eye. Maybe she'd go to the library and finish off that Korpii historical novel she was in the middle of. Or go play pinball at the arcade. Or go mix and match outfits. Or something. Anything to get her mind off just how lonely she was.

She pushed the blankets roughly off her, forcing them to the side of the bed. This was foolish, because the moment she tried to stand up, rather than finding her feet on solid, unmoving carpet, she placed them on smooth fabric. Unprepared for the sudden lack of friction beneath her, she slipped over and landed in a heap, splayed out across the floor. She picked herself up, muttering curses and expletives in both thickly Scottish accented English and equally thickly Scottish accented Gallifreyean. As she was about to push herself upright, she spotted something beneath her bedside cabinet.

A small red ring box.

She gasped. _That's... that's mine. But I gave it to him to keep. Why is it here?_

She scrambled across to the cabinet, retrieving the box from underneath. With trembling fingers, she opened it, finding the jewel encrusted golden engagement ring still safely ensconced within. But there was something else there, too... something she definitely didn't remember putting in there. A tiny square of folded-up paper.

_A note? He left me a note?_

She bit her lip. _Do I really want to read it? He must have left it here intending for me to get it some time after I left Leadworth... his last words to me. What the hell – of course I want to read it._

Hands shaking violently, she extracted the little square of paper and unfolded it, revealing the familiar block script of her ex-fiancée. His handwriting was much messier and more uneven than she remembered – evidently, his hand had been shaking as badly as hers was now when he wrote it. Tears splattered onto the thin paper as she took in the note's contents.

_Amelia Pond,_ it began.

* * *

><p><em>I'm guessing you'll read this a few days or weeks after I've gone. So this'll be the right time to say this.<em>

_I know you'll feel lonely. And upset. And guilty. And I know that however many times I tell you not to be, you, stubborn girl, won't listen to me._

_I can't stand the thought of you being lonely forever, Amy. Because even if we got married, one day I'll die, and you won't. You'll just go on and on and on, missing me, feeling sad for me. And I can't stand that._

_I know you gave this ring to me to keep as a memory of you. I don't need it. I've got all the memories of you I'll ever need. This doesn't belong to me._

_It belongs to you._

_When you'll ready, you'll know what to do. You always know._

_Goodbye, Amy. Look after yourself every now and then._

_Love,_

_Rory._

* * *

><p>If Rory had written the note intending to make Amy feel better about herself in the short-term, he was sorely mistaken.<p>

The moment Amy had gotten to the words _"Love, Rory"_, she'd had it. She collapsed to the floor, convulsing, barely able to breathe properly for the force of the sobs wracking her body. Her cheeks were now covered in a sticky, glistening sheen of tears.

She knew what he was saying. What he was trying to do. But all she could think about was just how much he had cared for her. Even now, long after their relationship had ended, he was still caring for her, looking after her. She didn't deserve this.

All she knew now was paralysing, debilitating loneliness. Endless, terrifying emptiness. That was her world now.

So strong was her sobs, so thick were the tears in her eyes that she didn't notice the thudding of footsteps outside her door.

"Pond! Just had a brilliant idea for where we should go tomorrow, though you might like to-" The Doctor bounced into the room, utterly oblivious, and then shuddered to a halt when he saw her slumped against the side of the bed, cheeks shining with moisture, the ring box and note still clutched tightly in her hands.

Amy noticed him at last, her once-vibrant, lively eyes now dead, lifeless pools of sickly green finding his. Her emotions shattered, her mind utterly exhausted, she acted completely on instinct, unthinking, desperate for an escape from the nothingness killing her from within.

Before he knew it, she had run into him with such force that she'd bowled him over, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, her lips smeared roughly over his.

_What the-_

He tried to pull away, to calm her, to try and work out what in Gallifrey's name had just happened. _Not this all over again._ But this time she was insistent, bloody-minded in her intent as her hands began to rove over his back, clawing at him as her body pinned his to the floor. There was no way she was letting go this time.

He tried again to remove himself from beneath her, but in the process he managed to accidentally bump his forehead into hers.

It was if a million light bulbs had suddenly been switched on after he'd been sitting in a darkened room. Thoughts and emotions suddenly assailed him, pouring from her unprotected mind into his. Whatever defences he had were simply washed away in the tsunami of _Amy_ surging into his mind, filling his consciousness.

_**What's-he-doing-here-why-is-he-here-I-don't-care-I-need-someone-I-need-anyone-and-I-want-I-want-I-want-I-need-I-want-I-need-anything-anyone-let-me-out-please-let-me-get-out-please-**_

As soon as he heard the final tattered, incoherent thought streaming into his mind, he understood. The alarm, shock and irritation at being jumped by her _again_ was instantly replaced in his hearts by sympathy and sorrow for her plight. With the parts of his mind still available for him to use, he managed to muster a response, hoping against hope that some portion of her mind was still capable of hearing him.

_**Amelia, wait. I know how you feel. But just wait.**_

The movement of her hands which were beginning to tug insistently at his tweed jacket stopped immediately. With a small _pop_, she extricated her lips from his, her wild emerald eyes burning with a uncontrolled fire as they gazed into his.

"Well, that was a surprise," the Doctor joked lamely. "Although the kiss probably was a bit rougher than last time."

The words seemed to bring her back. The dangerous flame within her eyes flickered and died, leaving them cold, sad, and empty. _Just like before_. The colour rushed from her cheeks and she pushed herself off him, spluttering hasty apologies as she tried to put as much distance between them as she possibly could.

"Sorry – I'm so sorry – I wasn't – I didn't-"

Quick as a flash, cat-like, he was up and before her, placing one finger on her lips and holding her trembling fingers in his other hand.

"No apologising, remember?"

She smiled gently, and the Doctor hoped that that was that – until tears began to stream down her face and wracking sobs began to surge through her body again. He pulled her into her arms, letting the tears soak his jacket as he stroked her fiery hair gently.

"It's OK. I'm here. I'll always be here. Whenever you need me, I'll be there for you, Amelia. You'll never be alone. I promise you."

"You promise me a lot of things," she whispered into his ear, sniffling.

"But I mean this one. It's the very least I can do. Fourteen years I've been ruining your life, hurting you. It's time I started trying to add to your pile of good bits again."

Amy let out a choked noise which was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "Silly old man. Don't you know you _are_ the pile of good bits? Now that... now that everyone else is gone..." She sighed miserably and rested her head on his shoulder. Recognising the signs of exhaustion automatically, the Doctor expertly lifted her by the legs and placed her gently on the bed.

"Sleep now, Pond." He hesitated briefly, then planted a kiss on her forehead, before standing to leave. Before he could take one step, however, Amy's hand had shot out and grabbed him by the wrist.

"Doctor – wait – could you, um, stay here? Just tonight, sleep here. With me. Don't worry, I don't mean like _that_," she added, smiling briefly as alarm flashed over the Time Lord's face. "I just need some – some, um, company. I don't want to be alone," she explained.

He smiled warmly at her. "Of course, whatever you need. You'll never be alone, Amelia, ever again. You have my word."

She squeezed his wrist tight, her crimson-painted nails digging through the tweed into his skin. "Thank you."

* * *

><p><strong>If you're wondering, this'll probably be the last in the series of chapters where you'll see moodyangsty/depressed Amy (which of course, being currently centered on her character, translates into the story). She'll be back to normal-ish happy Amy for a while, and yes, she will start seriously hitting on the Doctor...**

**...and then I turn the angsty/depressed/unstable Amy up to 11 (no pun intended) and take it to rather alarming proportions.. So yeah... a warning.  
><strong>


	23. No Pillow Fighting In The TARDIS

**So this took a tad longer than usual**_. _**A mixture of irritating writer's block for what happens beyond this chapter and report-writing season is the cause of the delay.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 23. No Pillow Fighting In The TARDIS: 1 December 2010<strong>

This wasn't how Amy had _quite_ expected it to go.

Sure, she felt infinitely, infinitely better than she had a few hours ago, but at the same time, she hadn't banked on this situation being so absurdly awkward as she lay in bed, acutely aware of the Doctor lying less than a foot from her, not wanting to get too close lest she scare him off, but still needing his companionship... _yes. Companionship is a good word. Nice word. No hidden meanings there._

She closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly.

_This is bloody ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous._ Why was she getting so embarrassed over something so simple as this? She'd never been inhibited in that sort of way ever before. She'd seduced plenty of boys in her time on a whim, mostly for fun – hence her job – and had even had a few wild one-night stands as a result, mostly after a few drinks. She'd never been particularly ashamed of it (how could she when the result was so enjoyable?) or particularly cared what other people thought about it – hell, she didn't particularly care what most people thought about her full stop. And she hadn't even done _that_ on this occasion! So _that_ wasn't why she was turning beetroot-red every time the Doctor moved.

And it wasn't what she did a few hours back that particularly that made her like this, was it? _I mean, I straight-out tried to get laid with him a few months back just because I sort of felt like it. Felt pretty stupid afterwards, but it seemed a good idea at the time. So that's not it._

So why the hell did she feel so nervous now that he was lying innocently next to her, doing nothing more than keeping her company as she'd asked? Why did her skin feel like it had turned to lava every time he turned over is his sleep, accidentally brushing his arm over hers?

She hadn't felt this awkward in years, not since she'd finally mustered up the courage to ask Rory out for the first time... _oh._

As soon as her thoughts drifted towards her ex-fiancée, her thoughts about the awkwardness of the situation she was currently in vanished, doused as if a bucket of cold water had been poured on her.

_I wonder what he'd say if he could see me now..._

Her thoughts traced back to the red box lying on the bedside cabinet, the jewel-encrusted ring inside, the final note he'd left her. His message had been clear.

_Move on._

Something crystallised within her at that instant, in that moment of clarity. The epiphany she'd been waiting the best part of a month for came at last.

_That's enough, Amelia. Enough moping. Enough weeping. Enough feeling sorry for yourself. Rory doesn't want you to be alone. He wants you to have someone. And he knows that the someone is right there lying next to you. And Rory knows he'll never leave you. It's time to move on._

The last two words reverberated around her head, filling her psyche, a demand, a requirement, a statement of necessity. Her resolve hardened.

_I am Amelia Pond._

As her determination bloomed like the first shoots of green in the forest after a bushfire, so too did the wounds within her, raw and burning, begin to fade. They'd never disappear, they couldn't disappear, but she could bear it.

_I am Amelia Pond. I will get through this. I will move on.  
><em>

She turned her head, taking in at the unruly mop of brown hair, the angular face and broad chin, half-lit in the dull light. She glanced at the deep blue bowtie fixed around his neck. _Idiot,_ she thought with a smile, _even when he's asleep he refuses to take the blasted thing off._ She listened to the soft sound of his breathing – unlike Rory, the Doctor didn't snore, and the noise of air cycling through his lungs was only just loud enough to banish the oppressive silence that had accompanied her for weeks – but it was there, and it was never leaving her.

She studied the face more carefully in the half-darkness. Even now in his tranquillity, he could see the lines of age, war-weary, ravished by guilt and a hundred terrible, heart-wrenching decisions that he'd needed to make in his long, long life. The pain that so utterly, utterly dwarfed her own... she cast her mind back to that first adventure with him, so many months ago now. She was still human back then, but she didn't need to be like him to understand him...

* * *

><p>"<em>Amazing, don't you think? The Star Whale. All that pain, and misery, and... loneliness." She turned her head to look at him, still gazing out of the glass window into space, his face unreadable. "And it just made it kind."<em>

_He turned to look at her, shame written between his eyes. "But you couldn't have known how it would react," he pointed out._

"_You couldn't," she agreed, "But I've seen it before. Very old and very kind, and the very, very last. Sound a bit familiar?"_

_He smiled, filled with the warm, welcoming light of gratitude, and pulled her into a tight hug as she did the same. She sighed almost imperceptibly as his presence filled her world. "Hey," she whispered._

"_What?"_

"_Gotcha."_

"_Ha. Gotcha."_

_They rested their heads on the other's shoulders, ensconced deeply in the others' arms. The Last of the Time Lords and the Girl Who Waited. Together._

_Complete._

* * *

><p>Amy smiled ever so gently as she relived that unforgettable evening... that evening she'd waited her entire life for. She reached out a hand to brush a lock of chocolate-brown hair from out of his face. He muttered something in Gallifreyean at her touch before relaxing again.<p>

As she always did before making a decision, she bit her bottom lip briefly, before sliding across. She rested her head in the crook of his neck, her long, fiery hair brushing against his cheek and tumbling over his shoulders. She placed one arm over his chest, eyes closing as the warmth of his body began to finally send her into the embrace of sleep. As the darkness took her, she knew she would never be alone ever again. She had the Doctor.

_My Doctor._

* * *

><p><em>It's the end times.<em>

_All her work, all her pains, all her labours have been reduced to ashes and dust in her hands. Fires flicker in the ruined masonry around her as the remains of the houses once filled with laughter and life burn to the ground._

_The great irony is that she had just finished the last section of wall. Every stone had been placed, every flag raised, every cannon primed. The city, from without, was now truly unstoppable, invincible, terrifying._

_But the true threat had always lay within._

_No one lives here now. They all fled weeks ago, escaping from the white terror within. They're so desperate to leave that they simply stand and go, not bothering to pack, to collect prized possessions, to put out the fires in the fireplaces. So the city burns, but it's all academic – the whiteness overtakes them all anyway._

_The Queen is the last one left._

_She can't escape. No one can escape. Her walls are so thick, so impenetrable that not even she can find a way through. She runs to the gate, trying in vain to force the rigid iron bars open, but they don't budge. They'll never budge. Her handiwork is far too perfect._

_She notices a sudden brightening of her vision._

_She turns and finds a wall of pure, unblemished white light towering over her. Higher than the tallest mountain, wider than the widest ocean, unstoppable, inescapable. Creeping slowly yet inexorably towards her._

_She closes her eyes, bowing her head in defeat as the whiteness consumes her at last._

* * *

><p>The Doctor jerked awake with a gasp.<p>

_Well hello. What the devil was that? Burning cities, queens, flags, castles... and a wall of white. Oh. Oh, that makes sense. That was Amy's dream. But what was she dreaming about? It seems like a metaphor of some kind... the blue and red flags, the impenetrable walls, the growing whiteness from within... ah. It is a metaphor. That's rather unique._

He felt a shudder against his face, and tilted his head to see Amy pressed right up against him, her thick, flowing river of flaming hair burning his cheeks. Her arm was draped across him, and he felt another shudder run through it and into him. Incoherent, frantic mumblings spilled out from between her parted lips, and her eyelids twitched relentlessly, her forehead covered in a sheen of sweat.

Ever so slowly, he tried pushing her arm off him, but the gesture only resulted in a pitiful whimper from the Time Lady. Her fingers dug into his chest, and she unconsciously drew even tighter into his body. Whatever her dream had been, it had clearly taken a turn for the worst. He tried flitting into her mind again, to leave a message that would awake her, but it was closed, completely sealed off from him.

_She must have pushed me out subconsciously in the last second, hence why I woke up. Whatever that white stuff really is, she doesn't want anyone to see it._

Another tremor ran though her and she cried out softly, a noise borne of sheer, utter terror. _I have to get her out of this._

He used the arm that wasn't pinned to him by her body to grab her shoulder, shaking her lightly. "Pond. Amelia. Wake up. Come on, Amy."

Another light jiggle and her eyes flew open, rolling jerkily in their sockets as she adjusted to her sudden return to consciousness. After a few seconds, they finally settled, her head tilted upwards to lock their eyelines, the blue depths of his full of concern.

"Doctor!" Amy's voice was weak, cracking slightly, her breaths coming to her in shallow, ragged bursts. "I assume you have some brilliant idea you need to share with me?"

He smiled gently at her, stroking her hair. "As a matter of fact I do, but more on that later. You were pretty obviously having a rather nasty nightmare just there."

She snorted, having recovered, but her eyes told the truth. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I was just dreaming that I would regenerate into a bow-tie wearing madman one day."

"Oi! They're cool."

She whacked him on the chest with the arm still lying over it. "Ow!"

"That's for being an idiot."

"You've gotta stop doing that, Pond. How would you like it if I did this?" He shot back, poking her in the midriff. Unexpectedly, she recoiled and giggled, hands reaching to her stomach to protect herself.

"Hey now. That tickles."

An evil grin spread across his face. "Does it now?"

She glared at him. "Don't you dare." But she was too late, of course, and seconds later she found herself spasming wildly as the Doctor tickled her senseless, her arms flying out in an attempt to retaliate. A mixture of breathless laughter and mixed-language Scottish-tinted cursing later, she finally found her lucid voice again.

"Stop. Stop! Or you'll kill me. Then I'll kill you."

"Very well," he replied in an overly respectful tone. An inexplicable urge took him and he suddenly found himself sliding his arms around her, pulling her back into his chest.

She gasped, surprised, but quickly relaxed into him, closing her eyes as his warmth seeped back through her body. _This feels good... feels right._

"But seriously, Pond," he murmured into her hair, taking in its lavender-strawberry scent. "You had a nasty nightmare back there. You were sweating like an old man in a sauna – trust me, I know that from personal experience."

"I don't think I want to know."

"No, you don't."

She laughed – a genuine laugh, all sparkling sunlight. "Alright, I'll admit it. I had a nightmare – a – a pretty bad one, by my standards. But it's gone now, and you're here, so it'll be fine."

"Amy, it's not that simple." He hesitated. "I know it's not that simple."

She tensed, drawing away from him slightly. "You've been going inside my head again?"

He sighed. _No point lying, she already knows._ "Yes, but this time it wasn't deliberate. Your barriers have been failing a bit lately, and you've been broadcasting some of your thoughts inadvertently into my brain. A mind as powerful as yours doesn't like to be ignored, so it's not like I had much choice. That was how I knew what you were thinking earlier on, by the way, when... you know. When you kissed me," he told her, a bit more bluntly than he had originally planned.

She blushed, drawing her arms over her chest in a slightly defensive gesture. "Sorry about that... I don't know what I was thinking-"

"It's alright, I understand. You've been through hell these last few weeks."

"It's nothing. Seriously, it's nothing. Not compared to some of the stuff you've had to get through once upon a time."

"It's bad enough, Amy."

She flipped over so she was facing him, her nose almost touching his own. He could feel the warmth of her breath flow over his cheeks as she spoke, a light twinkling in her eyes in the half-darkness of the bedroom.

"Always looking out for me, eh?"

"Always."

She bit her bottom lip, then without any warning whatsoever she had moved forward, pushing her lips tenderly into his.

"Thanks," she whispered, breaking the kiss. Before he could react or even process what had just happened, she sat up, disentangling herself from his loose embrace and rotating herself to slide off the bed. "So... what was that brilliant idea you had again?"

The Doctor just stared at the redhead, flabbergasted. She frowned and shot him a quizzical glance, eyebrows raised. "What's up with you? It's not like that's the first time we've kissed. Come on, Doctor, time to rise and shine." For good measure, she picked up her pillow and whacked him lightly over the head.

* * *

><p>For quite possibly the first time in decades, centuries, even, the Doctor found himself presented with a situation he had no clue how to deal with. His mind was racing, the cogs working furiously as he tried to deal with the implications of <em>whatever the hell she just showed him.<em>

Yes, he'd promised that she'd never be alone. And he'd absolutely meant it. But at the time, it had just seemed a gentle but otherwise redundant reminder of the promise Amy herself had given in front of the fireplace last month – she had been quite adamant that she would be spending the rest of her life with him on the TARDIS. Didn't that sort of automatically imply that she wouldn't be alone, that he would be there with her? After all, it was _his_ TARDIS, and he wasn't going anywhere either.

Because even if she hadn't sworn to be with him for eternity on that night, he had seen her loneliness. The emptiness. The oblivion eating away at her from inside. And he knew that _that_, like every other injustice he'd inflicted on his Amelia Pond, was _his fault._ OK, so she had grown up without parents, and that was difficult for her. Even so, she had managed to cope, finding the comfort in the form of Rory, and if it hadn't been for his own vanity, whisking her away from Leadworth to romp around the universe with him, she'd still be human, she'd still have Rory. She'd live a happy, normal life and that would have been that. But no. She was now a Time Lord, like him, and so completely, totally alone. There was no one for her except him. He was the last thing she had now, and he swore on his life that he would be worth it. It was the least he owed her.

Not just because she was the new, sudden hope for his species, the revoking of the extinction status he'd imposed on his own race. Not just because he could bear to see this opportunity slip. No. It was because it was _her_. He didn't know how. He didn't know why.

But somewhere along the line, she had become his whole world as well.

_Right. Stop. Enough of that, _he'd told himself firmly._ You've tried the whole romantic dilly-dally thing before, several times, and how did that work out? Have you forgotten what happened to your family – most likely by your own hand? Or Rose, pray tell? If you really care for her that much, are you really willing to see that happen? _Hew knew what happened to those who travel with you for too long. What always happens.

And that, he had thought, was that. Yes, he was in love with her. No, he wasn't going to lift a finger to act on it. He'd destroy her if he did. Some part of his brain, the parts which had once housed that dark, insidious voice, reminded him that she _wasn't_ human, she didn't _need_ that sort of protection... but even so. Being fully-fledged Time Lords hadn't saved his family, had it? Nor had it saved his cloned daughter, shot fatally mere minutes after being "born". So that, he told himself, was the end of it.

But now he'd felt her lips press against his... and his mind went blank.

It had only been an instant, the briefest, merest flicker, but he had seen – or had he been given? - a glimpse of how much she wanted him. How much she _needed_ him. How much she wanted him to be what Rory had been to her. How much she needed him to be what her parents never had been. How much he was _everything_ to her.

It was ironic... in his own efforts to avoid his own selfishness, to protect her from his vanity, he'd made the most selfish, vain decision of all.

_She needs you to be more than just an imaginary friend, _the voice told him, filling his suddenly-silent mind. No longer dark, no longer insidious._ Who are YOU to deny her?_

Desperate, disjointed rationalisations tumbled through him as those colder, saner parts of him clung onto the old, hard edifice of solitude. _You're over forty times her age. _Well, that didn't stop him last time, did it? Not to mention that he didn't _look_ older than twenty-six. _This isn't right – this isn't fair to Rory. _Except Rory had already told him that he could have her, on the condition he didn't hurt her. If he rejected her, wouldn't that be the most crushing blow of all? _If you stay with her, you'll kill her_. But she wouldn't ever leave. And they both knew it.

"What's up with you?" He heard a sharp Scottish-accented voice say, cutting through the raging battle within. "It's not like that's the first time we've kissed. Come on, Doctor, time to rise and shine." He felt soft fabric thump into his face and he snapped back to reality.

"Oi! No pillow-fighting in the TARDIS."

She grinned. "My room, my rules. Hurry up, then. I had been led to believe you had somewhere amazing, brilliant even, planned for us later on."

"Got it in one, Pond. I think you'll particularly like this one – Alaphi, two billion years into the future. _The_ most beautiful city in the universe – well, at least, within the closest three hundred million light years, which is good enough. I give you towers of shimmering crystal, gleaming in a multicoloured sun, forests of real gold and silver, waterfalls of the clearest, crystalline blue imaginable."

"Ooh-er. That _does_ sound rather good. I'll go and make breakfast." She slid off the bed and stood but before she could take a single step, she felt something soft collide with the back of her head. _What the-?_ She turned to see the Doctor having silently moved right behind her, pillow in hand, a mischievous, daring glint in his sky-blue eyes. Her own eyes narrowed.

"I thought you said no pillow fighting in the TARDIS?" she inquired sharply, but her lip was curling and her hand reached for her own pillow.

"Your room," he replied, pulling his arm back to ready another swing. "Your rules."

* * *

><p>"I still don't get how you can stand that stuff," Amy remarked, arms folded, looking across the breakfast table disdainfully as the Doctor scraped the bowl of custard clean with the last of the fish fingers.<p>

"Stuff and nonsense, Pond. Try some one day and you might change your tune," he replied with what he assumed was an air of dignity.

"No thanks. So, we going straight away, yeah?"

"Right after this." He hesitated. "Listen, Amy, about last night..."

Unexpectedly, she burst out laughing. "Really, Doctor. I kissed you, big deal. It's not like we had any naughty business or anything like that."

He blinked. "Naughty business?"

She sighed. "Never mind, moron."

"Oi! That's not very nice."

"Never said it was." Her lip curled into a small smirk. "So what were you going to say, then?"

"Right. About last night... well... um..."

"OK, Doctor, I'm pretty sure we both know what you're going to say," she interjected sharply. "Let me make a guess – you're unsure if this thing we've started will work." He didn't need to be a bona fide genius to know what _thing _she was referring to.

He sighed. "Well... are you?"

"No." She replied matter-of-factly, her expression not changing one whit. "I've got no idea how this is gonna play out. But that's not how I roll, Doctor. I do things because they seem like good ideas at the time, and right now, this strikes me as a good idea. I'm spending the rest of forever with you anyway, why not give it a shot sooner rather than later?"

"I can't say I'm so convinced."

"I know. And I know why you're not sure. It's a big part of why I like you so much."

He smiled gently at her. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Deadly. You should know that, you've been inside my head often enough," she told him as she stood to place her bowl in the auto-dishwasher, which whirred into life at her touch. Her voice was gentle, feather-light, but he could hear the undercurrent of suspicion beneath. He sighed. _I have to get to the bottom of this. As soon as possible._

"Amy, what's all this white business? Why are you so afraid of it?"

She froze. "You've seen that?" She whispered, her tone cold and foreboding as glaciers, the previously-hidden suspicion and fear now dripping from every syllable.

"Only a bit."

"But you've _seen_ it? How much else have you seen? _**Tell me, Doctor. Right now.**_" It was if a switch had been thrown inside, her usual light, playful personality replaced by its darker, angrier, mistrustful dual. Her voice became jagged and diamond-edged as she switched to the Doctor's native tongue.

_No lies._ "I only saw the first few dreams last evening. Right up until the burning city, which I assume is an abstraction of your conscious self."

"_**What – did – you – see? Did you see any of the... the white expanse? Any at all?**_" She moved towards him, her eyes flashing ominously, her hands balled into fists and her knuckles white.

"No," he replied without thinking, instantly regretting the lie. "Well, yes, actually. But only a little. Only the growing wall of white in the city."

"_**And after? Did you see... the white place? Did you see the eyes? And the chant?**_"

_What? What's this about eyes and chants? What the hell is she talking about? **"No. No, Amelia, I did not. Your mind closed off the connection at the end of the city dream."**_

Her eyes darted rapidly from side to side, searching, probing him for any hint of a lie, any flicker of a misdirection. There was none. Her shoulders relaxed and her fingers unwound again, the dangerous flame disappearing from her vivid green eyes. "Sorry. Just had to check. I really don't like when you go inside my head, if you hadn't noticed," she reminded him.

"Duly noted. Was an accident, as I told you." _Even though I really, really have to get to the bottom of it soon, before all her barriers disintegrate, before the instabilities shatter her self-control and she becomes an uncontrollable killing machine. And it's already begun..._

"Yeah, I know. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get changed." And just like that, she was back to her normal self. She spun on her heel and moved towards the doorway.

"Changed?" The Doctor asked her, his eyebrows raised. She was already wearing her usual combination of plain, plaid shirt and short denim skirt – why was she getting changed?

She turned and looked at him in a mixture of exasperation and amusement. "It's our first date, numpty. I need to be wearing something nice."

* * *

><p><strong>Hope this made up for the delay, I know more than a few of you have been waiting a while for the event of this chapter to happen.<strong>


	24. First Date

**I'm going to warn everyone in advance that if you were hoping that our two lovebirds would have their first outing as a couple go to plan, you might be disappointed. And you're probably going to hate me by the end of this.  
><strong>

**But then, you probably already knew that, didn't you?**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 24. First Date: 1 December 2010 - 5 February 2011<strong>

_Come on_, the Doctor thought impatiently, _what's taking her so long?_

In lieu of the occasion, the Doctor had decided to exchange his tweed jacket for an olive-green overcoat he had seen lying in his room, but was otherwise clothed in usual attire, bowtie and suspenders all. He shook his head, sighing. He _still_ had deep, deep reservations about this whole affair, but the sparkle in the emerald eyes demanded satisfaction.

He tried not to think about the wry suggestion that had formed in the corner of his mind that even though they'd barely even started their proper 'thing', and despite the fact he was over forty-five times her age, she _already_ had him wrapped around her finger.

Muttering impatiently, he turned on the spot and began twiddling knobs on the console again, entering co-ordinates for their next destination. He'd picked it the previous week in a moment of inspiration as part of his make-up-tour for Amy. That tour was now something very, very different. But it was a quite wonderful place anyway, so there was no change of plan in that regard.

He finished dialling in the co-ordinates and was about to head below to start some more somewhat pointless TARDIS maintenance when a clear, Scottish accented voice called out from somewhere above him.

"You look rubbish."

He turned to find Amy in a full-length, silken crimson dress, standing at the top of the staircase, an enigmatic glimmer in her eyes as she smirked at the Time Lord. The material was light, rippling around her curves without overly accentuating them. Her hair had been brushed out of its tousled morning state, and now fell over her bare shoulders in a river of shimmering flame.

"You look wonderful," he replied, mouth slightly agape at her appearance. _Understatement central._

"I could have sworn I saw a tux and top hat lying around here somewhere," Amy remarked as she descended the stairs, high heels enhancing her already willowy frame. "Couldn't you have worn that instead?"

"My apologies, Miss Pond." A smirk to match hers had found its way to his lips. "I'll endeavour to do better next time." She laughed, a sound that was like the cleansing cool of a waterfall cascading overhead, and linked her pale, slender arm through his.

"Shall we?"

Amelia Pond grinned at her new boyfriend. "Let's."

He gripped the flight lever and threw it down, sending the TARDIS flying through the Time Vortex.

* * *

><p>The crisp spring air of Alaphi was silent save for the rippling of the sea breeze and the delighted chirping of birdsong. It was mid afternoon and the inhabitants were taking a well-earned siesta, leaving the streets between the gleaming towers of gemstone, dozens of metres high, peaceful and empty. It was a picture-perfect scene, befitting of the title of most beautiful city in the local cluster of galaxies. From a distance, one could stand and watch for hours as the sun drifted slowly through the unique blend of gases in the atmosphere, changing the colour of the sky from a deep, crystalline blue, to a vivid, entrancing emerald and finally a stunning crimson-red. The crystals reflected whatever shade of light the sky chose to take, twinkling at every hour of the day.<p>

It was mid-afternoon, and the sky was still the spectacular shade of green that brought visitors from far and wide to the planet. Suddenly, the air on the outskirts of the city was rent by the soft wheezing noise, quite unlike anything else anyone could have claimed to have hear before.

As quickly as it came, the noise died down... and then came back again, louder. As it did so, the faint outline of a box began to appear out of thin air (and the air on Alaphi was indeed quite thin). The noise faded again, as did the box, but again, both returned. The cycle continued several more times before a deep reverberation, like the beating of a large drum, sounded out through the air, leaving silence and a big, blue box, sitting nonchalantly between two of the many artificial waterfalls that dotted the city.

The doors opened, revealing a tall, bow-tie wearing man wearing a full-length green overcoat, and an equally tall red-headed girl wearing an equally red dress, the fabric terminating just above her ankles.

The moment the doors had opened sufficiently, the girl's hand shot up to her mouth with a gasp, her eyes widening as she took in the city skyline from afar.

"Oh... my... god..." Amy breathed.

The Doctor grinned at her, a twinkle in his eye. After six months, it wasn't easy to surprise her in that way. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

Amy's response was to wrap her arms around the Time Lord's neck and ram her lips into his, her eyes fluttering closed as she drank in the kiss.

* * *

><p>The reservations the Doctor had about the whole affair that hadn't been chased away when he'd seen her walk down the stairs, or stamped out of existence when she'd reacted so joyously to the location he'd chosen quite simply vanished when their lips met.<p>

As did everything else in his mind.

All he could think about was his Amy, the taste of her, the smell of her, the feel of her shoulder blades as his hands slipped around her back...

She broke apart, smirking slightly, his arms still loosely wrapped around her.

"Well, well," she murmured, a mischievous glimmer in her sky-green eyes. "You sure got into _that_ one."

"Couldn't help myself," he replied, as awareness came flooding back. "Sorry. But I was of the opinion that the kissing was supposed to happen _after_ the date."

She giggled. "For ordinary girls, maybe. I'm not an ordinary girl in case you hadn't noticed. So shall we?"

"Oh, let's."

He lowered his arms off her shoulder blades, tracing over the silken fabric of her dress lightly, and linked his right arm through her left. Together, they took a single step over the threshold of the TARDIS and into the cool spring Alaphi air.

They had no idea that it would be the only one.

* * *

><p>Amy would never quite be able to describe the extraordinary sensation that hit her as she took that step beyond the TARDIS doors. The closest she would come was as if someone had wired up a billion loudspeakers right against her ear and starting shouting at her, but that didn't quite do justice to it.<p>

Billions of voices suddenly burst into life inside her head, filling every pocket of her consciousness. Utterly unprepared and unexpected, she didn't have time to react, to put up the protective barriers that would have kept them out before they flooded into her head like little balls of flame, burning her from the inside, an excruciating, impossible pain – not of the body, but of the _mind_.

Within a millisecond, the pain reached a crescendo, and her brain, completely overwhelmed, simply failed.

Her last conscious act to call telepathically to her boyfriend for aid before she was plunged into darkness and thought no more.

* * *

><p>The first thing the Doctor felt was the sudden arrival of thousand upon thousands of voices pressing against his mind.<p>

Having been to Alaphi before, however, he knew that this was nothing more than the unshielded telepathic conversations around him. The inhabitants of the planet, the Alaphite, were low-level category 5s, and at a young age, they were fitted with implants to allow them to communicate telepathically. Being weak, they couldn't detect any conversations beyond about ten metres. Being a fully trained Time Lord, however, and hence, considerably more sensitive, the Doctor found himself eavesdropping inadvertently on little pieces of gossip, business meetings and schoolyard tussles for dozens of miles around.

This was of no concern to him, though. He'd grown up on Gallifrey, where the level of ambient telepathic activity was even higher than it was here. Like on all planets with ambient telepathic activity, he'd developed an instinctive, natural barrier to the kind of undirected incessant chatter that surrounded him by the time he was just a few months old. It wasn't a product of his biology, it was just an obvious natural defence to the otherwise crippling noise that surrounded any resident of such a planet, coming before he could even crawl. It was so natural that no one really had ever thought about it, simply assuming that any telepath had such a barrier on instinct.

What he'd forgotten, therefore, was that Amy Pond _hadn't_ grown up on Gallifrey. She'd grown up on Earth, where the level of telepathic activity was close enough to zero as made no difference. And so whilst she could consciously create barriers that could easily keep out the ambient telepathic activity of not just one but several planets' worth of noise, she didn't have that instinctive natural defence.

As a result, the second thing he felt upon stepping out of the TARDIS was a desperate, terrified cry.

_**Help...**_

It was weak, so weak that for a moment he wasn't sure if it was actually addressed to him. But he knew that voice, knew it like his own two hands. And he'd definitely heard the terror, the confusion, the _pain..._

_What the..._

He turned, stunned, to look at the Time Lady, only to see her eyes rolling into the back of her head as the life vanished from her body. She fell in a graceful arc, rag-doll-like, her arm slipping out from his.

_No-no-no-no!_

Moving with the grace and speed of an athlete, he caught her before she could hit the hard concrete beneath her, cradling her limp form in his arms as he turned on his heel, kicking the TARDIS doors shut behind him as he re-entered.

"_**Get us out of here!"**_ He screamed at the console. The TARDIS, of course, heard him. The flight lever pulled itself down of its own accord and the TARDIS dematerialised from Alaphi, reappearing somewhere in deep space.

Somewhere safe.

The Doctor didn't notice, or care. His mind was consumed by a single, terrifying thought as he laid Amy gently on the floor, her head rolling to the side, her lips parted slightly and her eyes still sickeningly half-open, her green irises just visible beneath her eyelids, completely and utterly devoid of light... of _life._

"Amy! **_Amy!_**" He could shout and scream all day but he knew it would be of no use – she was quite clearly comatose. At best.

_Please don't let her be dead. Please don't let her her be dead._

He tried going into her mind, desperate, but there was nothing there. Absolutely nothing. Endless oblivion. That was all that he could find. He should have known that, of course, for he'd felt her psychic presence completely vanish when she'd collapsed, leaving a sudden, gaping hole in the telepathic field around him.

That was nothing, however, compared to the puncture that he felt in his hearts.

_No. She can't be dead. Please. Please._

He bent down and grabbed her hand, turning it over to inspect the back. There was nothing, no sign of anything unusual, no golden mist rising from her pale skin. _No regeneration._

With trembling fingers, he pressed his fingers to her exposed neck. If he didn't feel a pulse... he couldn't even contemplate it.

He pressed his fingers to the carotid artery and waited.

For half a second, nothing. Bile and terror rose in his throat as his stomach writhed in fear.

Then...

_Thump-thump-thump-thump._

Barely palpable but unmistakeable. A sensation more incredible, more glorious than anything he had felt in his long, long life.

A heartbeat of four.

* * *

><p>The next few minutes were a blur for the Doctor.<p>

Having determined that she was at least alive for the time-being, and hence having regained full usage of his immense intellect as his brain was no longer consumed by overriding, debilitating terror, he scooped the comatose Time Lady into his arms, racing up the steps two at a time to gently lay her on her bed, closing her eyes with his fingertips as he did so. The image of her half-obscured irises, a deathly, sickly green, would haunt him for life. He couldn't help but quickly take her pulse again, just to be sure... _One, two, three, four. Still alive. Right. Now to find out what happened._

He thought back to the events that immediately led up to her collapse.

_So we landed on Alaphi. I opened the TARDIS door to show her the city. We kissed, and blimey it was a good kiss. Then we linked our arms and we walked out of the TARDIS. And just like that, she collapsed. But she sent me a telepathic message for help first. Why, why, why? What happened there?_

He wracked his eidetic memory for the history of Alaphi. He was completely sure he'd landed in a time period that was safe. There was no possibility that he'd made a mistake... was there?

He had to check. He leapt up from her lifeless form, pausing only to cover her body with the blanket and reposition her head more comfortably on the pillow. Behind him, he heard a door swing open, and turned to find a doorway to the library which had certainly not been there ten seconds before.

"Thanks, dear," he muttered, sprinting into the library, only just managing to avoid running headlong into the pool. _History of Alaphi... History of Alaphi... where are you,_ he thought as his eyes traced along the shelves. They caught a purple-and-orange hardcover tome just above his eyeline. _There you are._ He yanked the book off the shelf and flicked rapidly through its pages, settling on the passage of history that he wanted.

_Alaphi was not known for its wars or violence,_ the author had written, _and indeed, the period in which the Alaphi Prime metropolis was voted the most beautiful city in the Pegasus cluster was marked for the astonishing feat of not a single violent crime or war in its entire tenure as holder of the title._

So he was right after all. And in any case, if someone had shot her, he would have noticed. Plus, she would have regenerated. Or she would be dead. Seeing that she had done neither, some malevolent being attacking her was most definitely ruled out.

It didn't comfort him **_–_** she was still very much comatose. _Come on. Think. Think. Whatever happened to her happened the moment she left the TARDIS doors. That must be important. Why is that important? __What protection was the TARDIS providing that disappeared when she walked out the doors?_

Immediately, a list tumbled through his mind as he recalled every type of shielding and protection the TARDIS provide to its inhabitants. _Energy shielding. High-velocity kinetic shielding, if I find the extrapolator. Toxic gas filters, if I ever manage to fix them. Chameleon circuit, obviously. Perception filters. Temporal shielding. Vortex shields. Psychic shielding. Oh..._

At the last item on the list, a memory stirred itself in his mind, of his first visit to the planet, many, many centuries ago. He was a different man then. He'd landed on the planet in its heyday, taking in the sights. Along the way, he'd passed a pair of its inhabitants, and heard them chatter telepathically, loudly insulting the multi-coloured umbrella he was carrying. That incarnation of him hadn't thought twice about putting them in their place... but he couldn't afford a trip down memory lane right now.

_Telepathic. The Alaphite are telepathic. The TARDIS was proving telepathic shielding, which was why it didn't affect her while she was inside. She steps out, though, and beyond the telepathic shield, and... oh no._

It was an epiphany. He now knew what happened. It all made sense. Her almost instantaneous transition from conscious and happy to within an inch of death. The complete oblivion in her mind. The seemingly contradictory steady beating of her hearts, as if nothing untoward had happened.

_Neurological overload._

A hot, nauseous sensation built within the Doctor's throat. The moment the Doctor had landed them on Alaphi, she was in terrible, terrible danger.

_She never grew up with telepathic exposure. She doesn't have the natural instinctive barrier._

Her only chance would have been if he'd told her to raise her external conscious barriers before they left and keep them up for the entire duration of their trip, but, of course, in the romance, levity and excitement, he'd completely forgotten to do that, hadn't he?

_Amelia Pond... I've failed you. Again._

He trudged back into her room, head bowed. He sat on her bed, taking in her round, almost angelic face, framed by rivers of flame. Part of her hair had fallen over her eyes. Although completely aware that it made no difference from her point of view, he couldn't help but brush it out of her face with his fingers. If she was dreaming, she would have sighed imperceptibly at the gesture.

There was no response, as she wasn't. She wasn't thinking anything at all. A single tear rolled down his cheek, then another. He blinked them away, recollecting himself. _No. NO. I have to be strong. For her._

He knew that, thankfully, her biology had given her one last line of defence. It was the only reason she was still alive. Mercifully, there would be no permanent effects from the overload and her mind would fully recover in time. But she would find daily life a bit tricky for a while when she woke. _When she wakes..._

He had no idea when that day would come. Overloads had been so few and far between in Time Lord history that the records were sketchy to say the least. The coma period was said to have lasted months for some, but other accounts put it at years. One famous incident had left a Time Lord incapacitated for over a decade.

It didn't matter. He didn't care.

_She waited fourteen years for me. If I have to wait that long for her, it's only fair._

He'd wait for as long as it took.

* * *

><p>Darkness.<p>

Total and utter black.

That was the first thing Amy Pond was aware of when consciousness returned.

_Am I dead?_

She might well have been, because she couldn't remember feeling so _strange_. Her mind seemed so... _detached_, as if there was a glass screen between her conscious self and the rest of her, and she didn't have a stone to break through. She couldn't feel her arms or legs - or anywhere else on her body, for that matter, resulting in a curious floating sensation. _I must surely be dead._

But there was a sound, a strange noise... a gentle humming, a whirring – _the TARDIS engines... I'm on the TARDIS?_

She opened her eyes.

Or, rather, she tried to open her eyes. But her eyelids simply wouldn't budge.

_What the hell? What's going on?_

She summoned up every ounce of determination available to her and with an almighty effort, forced her eyelids to crack open ever so slightly.

Even through the narrow slit, the light entering her eyes almost blinded her. It took all her will not to close her eyes again, but she had to know what the devil had happened to her, and where she was.

Another immense effort and her eyelids opened all the way, taking in a familiar blue colour, a painted, grainy texture. Her bedroom ceiling. She lowered her eyes to see herself still clothed in her crimson dress, a white duvet covering her body.

_I'm in my room, on the TARDIS. So... I'm guessing I'm alive. Always handy._

She tried to move, to get up – but again, her muscles refused to answer her request. Concentrating again, she directed all her effort towards moving her leg, but this time they didn't respond at all.

She tried her other leg. Same thing. Her arms, ditto.

Panic rose in her throat. _I'm paralysed. Why am I paralysed?_

She tried crying out for the Doctor but, as she'd suspected would happen, nothing came out. This didn't deter her, however.

_**Doctor!**_

From somewhere on her right, she heard an almighty crash, the unmistakable sound of a metal pot falling onto cold, hard stone. This struck her as somewhat odd, as the last time she checked the kitchen most definitely wasn't attached to her bedroom, but the thought was quickly replaced by relief as she heard thudding footsteps and saw the Time Lord appear next to her, sitting on the bed and gripping her lifeless hand as if magicked out of thin air.

"Amy? Are you really awake?"

**_Yes, numpty, hence why I'm talking to you._**

He smiled gently at her. She would have returned it if she could, relieved that he remained the one, unchanging constant in her life, looking exactly the same as ever, bow-tie and all. On closer inspection, however, she could see that wasn't quite true – shadowed bags had developed under his eyes and his hair was even more unkempt than usual.

_He looks like he's barely slept in weeks... how long was I out?_

Suddenly, he had reached his arms beneath her and was holding her limp body tight against his, constricting her breathing slightly as he nuzzled her temple, taking in her scent. Although she could barely feel him holding her and couldn't react physically in any way, the nature of his reaction told her everything she needed to know. She closed her eyes, satisfaction and contentment washing through her. "Oh, Amelia. I thought I'd lost you," he whispered into her hair.

_**Hi to you too. I'm not going anywhere. But first things first – there a reason I'm paralysed? I can't move anything but my eyes.**_

He pulled back, locking his gaze with her again-open eyes. His face still wore that same gentle but somewhat sad smile as he stroked her fringe.

"Yes, you will be for a while. Don't worry, though, your motor skills will come back eventually. Give it a bit."

_**So I won't be quadriplegic forever?**_

"'Course not. I imagine you'll be up and about in no time at all."

_**Thank God for that. Would have been bloody boring just sitting here all day, relying on you to drag me around.**_

"Ah yes, now that you mention it, I have something for you." He clicked his fingers and without warning, dug his arms underneath her leg, lifting her bodily off the bed. She squawked telepathically in surprise as he carried her across the room and placed her in what was unmistakably a wheelchair – albeit a rather futuristic one.

_**Gee, thanks,**_ she remarked dryly. **_But doesn't this still involve you dragging – well, pushing – me around?_**

"It's motorised, and I added a telepathic circuit to the controls."

_**So I just...**_

"Yep. Think and go."

_**Alright, so if I tell it to move forward...**_

And it did, leading to another surprised squawk emanating through the psychic field as the silver wheelchair moved forward, the Time Lady giggling telepathically as she rolled across the room. After a few seconds, however, she noticed that the opposite wall was approaching rather fast.

_**Doctor, how do I-**_

_Crash._

The Doctor bounded ahead to pull the Time Lady away from the wall, who was sending out frantic messages of alarm (from her knees having been pinned between the seat of the wheelchair and the hard stone wall, although she couldn't feel them) and psychic laughter at the experience.

"I think you'll find that you have to tell it _manually_ to stop as well," he told her, amusement dripping from his voice.

_**Could have told me earlier,**_ she shot back. He laughed – even in her less-than-able state she still maintained her usual snark. **_So how long was I out?_** She asked.

His smiled dropped as he turned the wheelchair around, tilting her neck with the palm of his hand so her head was back upright again. _So fragile, so precious..._ "Two months. It's early February now."

She paused. **_You're not serious._**

"Deadly serious."

**_Bloody hell. So... I've missed Christmas? And my birthday?_**

He winced. "I'll make it up to you, I promise."

**_Don't worry about it. So long as you're here with me, I've got what I need._**

"And I thought _my_ lines were cheesy."

_**But this one happens to be true, **_she pointed out, drawing a wan smile from the Time Lord. _Dammit, I want to kiss him so badly, but I can't... __**So what happened to me?**_

He sighed. "I'm sorry. It was my fault."

_**What did I say about not apologising?**_

"I know. But this really was my fault. I could have killed you, I almost killed you, just because of a stupid, stupid mistake..." He trailed off, head bowed, as his despair began to choke him from within.

_**Hey now,**_ she crooned softly, reassuringly, her thoughts easing his pain. **_It's OK. Whatever happened, I know you didn't mean it. And I can tell you've been doing nothing but care for me while I was out. So what actually happened?_**

He met her eyes, aged pools of aquamarine meeting sparkling emerald. "The Alaphite are weakly telepathic. I should have mentioned to it to you, but..."

_**Probably, yeah,**_ she interjected, **_but I really don't see why that's a problem,_** she pointed out nonchalantly.

"On Gallifrey, and on any planet inhabited by psychics, when growing up everyone develops a unconscious psychic defence against others. It's the only way we can keep ourselves sane, otherwise the telepathic chatter of the thousands and thousands of people around you would drive you completely bonkers."

_**I can imagine. So I'm guessing that when I stepped on to Alaphi, I didn't have this defence? Why not? I can easily create barriers that could shut out any number of people if I wanted to**_.

"I know. But that's the point – you have to do it _consciously_. You grew up without high-level telepathic ability or indeed any telepathic noise around you at all. You don't have that sort of natural defence that only comes from being exposed to ambient telepathic hubbub from a very young age."

_**That sucks,**_ she remarked, drawing a chuckle from the Time Lord.

"It does, doesn't it?"

_**Mm. So when I stepped out of the TARDIS...**_

"Yes. As soon as you left the TARDIS's shielding, your mind picked up the telepathic conversations, not just of the city, but of the entire planet. That's how sensitive you are. Unfortunately, ten billion voices is far too much for even your brain to handle. Before you could react and put up your conscious barriers it... overloaded."

A shudder ran through the psychic field, the word having triggered the memory of a thoroughly disturbing passage Amy had read in an ancient Gallifreyean text several months before. _**Overloaded? But that... that means...**_

"Yeah. You know what that means."

_**Have I lost any memories? Will I be a different person from now on? Tell me, Doctor, **_she demanded, her tone urgent.

"No, I don't think so. The automatic response to an overload is to close off all the most important parts of the mind. That's not just critical functions like breathing and digestion, but memories too. All your motor and speech skills burnt out instantly but your memories and personality are intact."

He felt her relax. _**Thank goodness for that. Was scared for a moment that I might become weird and wear a bow-tie.**_

"Oi. They're cool."

_**They are not.**_

It struck him that even in this state, she was still utterly irrepressible. He smiled at her and stroked her cheek, leaning down to press his lips to her forehead. She closed her eyes, the one gesture available to her, revelling at his touch.

_**Wait,**_ she began, **_but if I'm paralysed, then how come I can feel you now? I couldn't feel you touching my hand before, or when you were hugging me._**

"Your nervous system has started to repair itself. Your facial muscles will come back first, although they'll take some time to be fully functional. You can already move your eyes, and your major facial and neck muscles should follow within short order. But your arms, legs and finer motor functions will take a while to return to full use. You'll basically have to re-learn how to walk and talk again." He closed his eyes, feeling little but acute shame for yet another wrong he'd inflicted upon her.

_**Doesn't matter,**_ she replied airily. **_So long as I can move around in this thing and talk to you like this for the time being, I'll be fine._** _**But you owe a bunch of presents, by the way. And a date, **_she reminded him.

He didn't smile. For the last two months he'd thought about little other than just how fragile, how precious she was, how dangerous he was to her. "Listen, Amy..."

_**Oh shut up. Not having a bar of it. I can see those shadows under your eyes, Doctor. And I can see that bed you've given yourself in the corner. And the kitchen you've attached to the side. And a bathroom. I bet you've even added a shortcut to the library too.**_

Now he couldn't help but smile. "Observant, aren't you?"

_**I try. My point is, Doctor, you can go on all day about how dangerous you are to me, and all that. But for the last two months I bet you've barely left this room at all, apart to pick up this wheelchair and modify it.**_

She was, of course, correct, he _hadn't_ left the room and surroundings at all other than to find the wheelchair in a 24th century hospital. Seeing this, the TARDIS had kindly attached some extra rooms to Amy's bedroom to make life a bit easier for him, amongst other modifications it knew would be necessary when Amy woke up. But even so...

"I can't lose you, Amelia. For a moment I thought you had died there, and it was one of the worst feelings I've ever had in my life. There's plenty of competition for that, too."

_**Yet you could have left me in Leadworth for Rory to take care of me and run off on your own. But you didn't. You stayed to care for me on your own. You waited for me. **_She paused, letting the statement sink in._** Face it, Doctor, **_she continued_,_**_ you're hopelessly in love with me. And it goes the other way. I know it's dangerous. I know I might be killed the next time we leave the TARDIS. And I – don't – care._**

He gazed at her for a few seconds, his face unreadable, before her determination burning star-bright in her eyes won through and he smiled again. "My Amelia Pond. What would I do without you?"

_**Probably be stupid bored. **_**_Now what's for lunch, or breakfast, or whatever? I'm starving._**

The Doctor sprang up, regaining his usual energetic demeanour. "Ah. Yes. Lunch. I'm afraid that since you can't exactly chew, it'll be soup for a while. Oh, and I'll be spoon-feeding you."

Amy groaned telepathically. This was not going to be easy on her sense of dignity.

* * *

><p><strong>Sorry. I'm mean.<br>**


	25. March And September

**Extraordinary response to the last chapter. 15 reviews or something? I love you all. Will take a time out to mention mrswhovian, Some Doctor Who Fan and hermi1, since I obviously can't reply via PM to anonymous reviews.**

**The delays should be over now, since both exams (one was a breeze, the other somewhat disastrous - although I wasn't alone in thinking that, thankfully), most of the reports and all the assignments are out of the way. So I have time to work and think properly again. Temporal Discont'ies will get rolling soon, and there's another chance of something else under my name in the near future too.**

**Amazing how much you realise you can do once you go from being impossibly busy to impossibly untaxed.**

**It seems redundant and a little immodest to ask if we can get to 100 reviews, but... yeah?  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 25. March and September: 11 - 22 March 2011<strong>

It took several days for the major muscles in Amy's neck, jaw and tongue to become responsive again, and just over three weeks to begin to regain use of her fingers. Unfortunately, this wasn't particularly useful, as she still had no feeling in her shoulders and only the slightest twitch of her right arm available to her. Still, if she wanted something, she found strumming her fingers on the seat of her wheelchair complemented any telepathic messages of impatience superbly, and sent the Time Lord scurrying off to find whatever she was demanding at the time.

_I can't walk or talk and he's still terrified of me_, she thought wryly to herself.

Amy could never have wished for a better, more considerate or understanding carer than the Doctor. He doted on her, never moving more than ten seconds' sprint from her, and then only ever for brief periods as he grabbed something for her, or going ahead to make sure her path was clear of obstacles. It was a reminder and a confirmation, as if she needed one, of the veracity of the choice she'd made to start acting on their mutual feelings towards each other. Those feelings had grown exponentially at a result, and whilst she certainly missed Rory, felt sorry for him and felt terrible for the injustices she'd inflicted on him, she had no regrets when it came to giving both her hearts, fully, totally, to the Time Lord.

_But I can't even bloody TELL him that, can I? Can't open my mouth and say how I feel._ Of all the abilities she usually took for granted that were denied her, her lack of speech was the one that grated the most. Of course, she could communicate anything she wanted or needed telepathically.

But that wasn't the point – she still hated the fact that this was the only method of communication available to her . For one, it meant exposing her mind in a manner that instinctively made her deeply uncomfortable. After the overload, she was even more paranoid (if that were possible) about the integrity and sanctity of her own mind. The Doctor, knowing this, didn't try to respond psychically unless he absolutely had to. Part of her expressed disgust at herself for displaying such a lack of trust in him, but some habits were much too hard to kill.

More importantly, however, it was the _ability_ to do so that counted, that most basic, fundamental of skills. This was what she so craved, and not having it infuriated her. _All I want to do is be able to speak WHO I want to WHEN I want to. Is that too much to freakin' ask? _

Apparently it was, but that didn't stop her. Amy Pond was determined, and when she was determined, Amy Pond _always_ got her way. Eventually.

The first time she'd tried to speak again all that came out was a vague moaning noise, her control over her tongue and vocal cords far too poor to articulate anything intelligible. She joked telepathically to the Doctor that it was not dissimilar to the sound she made 'in bed', a comment that had, once he registered the intended meaning, left the Time Lord spluttering and the approximate colour of beetroot. She chuckled to herself, knowing that her lack of speech didn't stop her being herself.

She didn't care about the hit to her dignity. She knew what she wanted, and there was _nothing_ that would stand in her way. Not even her own muscles. So despite the fact that it made her feel a right fool she kept trying.

It wasn't a case of her not knowing _how_ to speak. It was simply a case of her body not responding adequately to her commands. When she complained about this to the Doctor, he smiled sympathetically, often planting a kiss on her forehead, before telling her that she was already progressing at a rapid rate, and it wouldn't be too long before she could start to talk properly again. She'd already managed to reach the stage where she could pronounce any one-syllable words, after all, after just six weeks, and was already starting to get her tongue around two syllables again. Still, though...

_I feel like a goddamn two year old, _she grumbled,_ struggling to pronounce bloody simple words like "Doctor"._

Between this and the denial of all and any independence, Amy found herself growing irascible and short-tempered. She had been completely self-reliant for all her life. She'd learned to cook by the age of six. Was shopping (or at least what passed for shopping in a village like Leadworth) and doing her own washing by the age of six and a half. Was perfectly capable of living on her own for long stretches of time by the age of seven, and it was near the end of one of these stretches that she would meet her imaginary friend and future lover.

But now she couldn't drop by the library and read a book without help, although the Doctor had installed a telepathically-controlled video screen and a book-holder, complete with automatic page turner. He still had to _get_ the book for her.

She still couldn't eat without him literally feeding her, even if she could now chew and swallow safely.

She couldn't take a bath or get changed without help, though both experiences turned out to be rather unique ones in their own right, leaving both Time Lord and Lady bright red in the face.

She couldn't even go to the toilet without assistance.

_This is gonna drive me insane,_ she grumbled. _And it's so not fair he gets to see me naked without anything in return._

Though she didn't admit it to him, the wheelchair turned out to be an absolute godsend. A few teething difficulties with the controls notwithstanding, she found that it was responsive to her command and surprisingly nimble. The various lifts the TARDIS had installed all over helped as well, especially in the console room, with its multitude of layers and stairs.

They'd still managed to go around, the Doctor taking her to mostly earthbound, flat, romantic and _safe_ locations, never going more than a few hundred feet from the TARDIS. If that meant landing _inside_ the restaurant he had booked them into, then so be it. It would have been far too risky to do otherwise, especially since Amy was still suffering the after-effects of the overload.

Every now and then, without any warning at all, her still-recovering brain would object to its over-usage, and she'd be assailed with a debilitating headache, agony coursing through her Time Lord mind for several minutes. Unfortunately, this was an entirely biological phenomenon – there was nothing the Doctor could do other than let her dig her fingernails into his wrist, murmuring words of comfort and wiping the sweat off her brow whilst they waited for the pain to dissipate, doing his best not to get too worked up by the muffled moans she was making vocally and the heart-wrenching screams she was emitting telepathically.

According to the Doctor, the only way to stop the horrible episodes would be to greatly reduce the speed at which she regained control over her own body. The mere suggestion of this sent her into a half-hour rage at him – there was no way she'd do anything _but_ try to return to normal use of her own body as soon as possible. However...

_**It... hurts... it hurts so much... **_Amy told him weakly, slumped over in her wheelchair in a TARDIS corridor and rivers of tears pouring down her cheeks following by far the nastiest episode yet. The best way she could describe it was akin to someone sawing her skull open with a rusty hacksaw and applying a blowtorch to her brain.

"I know, Amelia, I know," the Doctor whispered comfortingly into her ear, planting soft kisses on her cheek and temple, massaging the back of her head. What else could he say? What else could he do?

Nevertheless, they did their best to continue tramping around the universe. This helped assuage Amy's natural craving for adventure, knowing that this was probably the best she could manage right now. At least they weren't stuck inside all day.

Because by god TARDIS life had taken a turn for the boring lately. All she could do was read a book, watch some far-future reality TV show or jot down – rather, type, print and ask the Doctor to attach – notes in her diary. Truthfully this was not all _that_ different from what she usually did aboard the TARDIS, but the fact she was restricted to such a narrow range of activities irritated her immensely.

_At least if I have to sit stuck in one place, might as well make that "one place" different each day._

And she didn't need to walk around to be stunned at some of the places they were going.

* * *

><p><em><strong>This is absolutely amazing,<strong>_ she told him _as they visited the Paris World's Fair in 1889. ___**Is it really true that the Eiffel Tower was only meant to be temporary? **___She rolled beneath the immense iron edifice, craning her neck as best she could given her limited range of movement._

"Yep. Was originally meant to be torn down in 1909. Wasn't exactly the most popular piece of architecture around at the time. Lot of people thought it 'wasn't French'."

_**Seriously? **_Amy, growing up steeped in late 20th and early 21st century culture, couldn't imagine a Paris without the iconic landmark, let alone a Paris where it wasn't universally popular.

"Seriously. Guy de Maupassant would only ever eat lunch in the restaurant inside the tower, because it was the one place he couldn't see it."

_**Sounds a riot, him.**_

"Well he'll try to commit suicide in a few years, so..."

An awkward pause. _**Oh. Oops. Sorry.**_

"No need to apologise. Not everyone gets a happy ending, unfortunately."

_**We will, though.**_

He smiled at her. "Ever the optimist, eh, Pond?"

_**Yep.**_

"Thank you. Means a lot to me, and I'll do my best to make sure you're right."

_**You know, if I could stand, I would snog you senseless right now.**_

"Amy, there's thousands of people around us," he admonisher her gently, although he had to admit he didn't mind the idea.

_**Do I look like I care?**_

He bit his lip, trying not to think about the fact that given her slumped shoulders and haggard, vacant facial expression, she didn't look like much at all. Whilst she could move her head and mouth normally, she didn't have anything like the fine muscular control over her facial muscles to manage anything resembling normal facial expression. As a result her face maintained a constant blank, vacant expression, as if she were permanently staring aimlessly into space. It was highly disconcerting to witness, which was why the Doctor often refused to look at her directly, instead fixing his attention on her arm or some point above her. After catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror, Amy couldn't say she blamed him as she saw herself perched in the wheelchair, her head slightly tilted due to her neck muscles having not quite recovered from their atrophy, her face locked in that unnerving, dead stare.

"I suppose not."

"Good sir, are you talking to yourself?"

He shot upright as if electrocuted, startled by the curious, French-accented inquiry of one of the assistants whose job was to help people navigate their way around the sprawling array of marquees and exhibits beyond the tower.

"Er – yes, no, sorry. Was just talking to my wife here. She had a nasty accident a while back, she can't talk very well."

_**Wife? Really?**_ Amy's tone was surprised but more than a little intrigued.

The assistant blinked. "My apologies, I just heard you speaking rather loudly there and couldn't hear anyone respond."

The Doctor waved him off. "Not a problem, it's a common mistake."

"Thank you, good sir. I take it from your wife's attire that you're not from Paris?"

The Doctor glanced briefly down at the Time Lady. Whilst his bow-tie was far less out of place in this time period than usual, Amy's black leather jacket, cream blouse and tight blue jeans (a short skirt in this setting would have been nothing short of scandalous) was a combination that was more than a little anachronistic.

Amy didn't have to read his mind to know what he was thinking. _**Oi. None of that. No way you're getting me into some ancient history frock or something like.**_

The Doctor had to suppress a smirk at that. "No, we aren't. Scotland, actually."

The assistant's eyebrows shot into his hairline. "Scotland? But your accent sounds English," he pointed out.

"Well, actually, my wife is from Scotland, but I'm not. Anyway," he continued, pre-empting the awkward question he knew would follow. "We're a little short on time, so could you direct us to the French section?"

"Ah, yes, down there," the assistant replied, gesturing down a cobblestone street packed with visitors. "Make sure you catch a glimpse of the Imperial Diamond, a quite remarkable jewel. The largest in the world, I believe."

"That's the plan."

The assistant nodded. "Enjoy your visit to the _Exposition Universelle_, and to Paris. And I wish your wife a speedy recovery."

The Doctor grinned in his usual effervescent manner, giving the assistant a quick salute. "Thanks a bunch. Come along, Pond, we've got a diamond to see," he called, already skipping ahead of her.

_**Wife, eh?**_ She thought wryly as the wheelchair caught up with him.

"Yes, well, it sounds a lot more sensible than 'time-travelling alien couple who spend all day cooped up in a blue box', don't you think?"

_**Fair point. Could get used to it, though.**_

"If you think I'm about to do your washing for you permanently, Pond, you're sorely mistaken."

She would have smirked at him if she could. _**We'll see about that.**_

* * *

><p>Another sign of her complete lack of independence came without fail every evening. Every night she acutely aware that she couldn't even get into bed by herself. The Doctor had to bodily lift her out of the wheelchair and place her gently on the mattress, kissing her on the forehead, or the cheek, or the lips as he did so.<p>

On the other hand, she didn't really mind this so much, one because of the kissing, and two as it gave her a ready made excuse to ask the Doctor to stay with her for the night. Again. Just like every other night.

She didn't do this because she wanted to get laid like she had months before – although the thought had crossed her mind more than once, she was in no state at all to do so. No, her primary justification was the simply the comforting warmth that his presence gave her as she drifted off, ensconced safely in his arms whilst she slept. Whilst she dreamt.

The overload had led to an emergency shielding of all her memories, a last-resort measure genetically ingrained in her as a final defence against psychic attack. This had temporarily repaired the disintegrating barriers surrounding that deepest, most unwanted corner of her mind... but her dreams were still flecked with white, a low, buzzing and very familiar chant in the background.

The sheer fear of the nightmares returning meant her usually-short sleep was even more truncated. This added to her ever-present irritability, and it didn't take much to set her off. Such as, for example, the lift controls failing in the console room.

_Stupid – bloody – thing!_ She pushed again at the little control panel next to her with her mind, willing it to activate and take her down to the console level. It didn't. _Work, damn you! Why won't you just bloody work when I tell you to?_ Being inanimate, the panel was just as unresponsive to her much-angrier command as it was the first time.

_If I could just use my bloody arms I'd be able to operate the effin' thing manually, but NOOO. It has to go break on me. AGAIN._

She sighed, controlling her near-incandescent ball of rage.

_**DOC-TOOOOOOOR!**_

She heard an almighty crash and a groan from somewhere below her, as the Doctor fell off the swing-chair beneath the console.

"Trying to to knock me out, Pond?"

_**Just trying to remind you that maybe if your stupid lift actually decided to work for once, we wouldn't have this problem,**_ Amy shot back, in no mood to be reasonable.

He sighed. "Sorry, I'll get it fixed later," He flicked out his sonic and pointed it at the lift, which immediately shuddered into life, lowering the disabled-but-pissed-off girl to the lowermost level of the TARDIS. "Better?"

_**Much,**_ she huffed. She reminded herself that he was doing the best he could, but her rather violent mood swings that she'd been prone to for most of her life had never been entirely borne out of rationality. _**So how's the repairs going? **_She asked in a much friendlier tone.

"Well, before your interruption. There's something I'm missing, though... something obvious..."

_**Did you remember to reconnect the chrono-distributor valve?**_

He clicked his fingers. "Aha! That's it. Knew I'd forgotten something silly like that." A shower of sparks cascaded from the console and a hum reverberated through the TARDIS as the Doctor reattached the device.

Amy laughed – out loud, one of the few vocal gestures she could actually manage, although it didn't quite sound like any normal laugh the Doctor had ever heard, being more of a gurgling hiccoughing noise. _**You're welcome.**_

"So what's the plan for today?" He asked, taking off his goggles and heading up the stairs. Before Amy could even begin considering a new destination, a shrill ringing noise rent the air of the console room. Surprised, the Doctor twirled over to the other side of the console and raised the phone to his ear. "Hel-lo?" He intoned in a sing-song voice. "Oooh! Hello, there... yes, yes, we're both good... now? Are you sure? I'm not sure this is an appropriate... ah. Sorry. We'll be there in one minute." He replaced the phone and spun back to the flight panel of the console, his fingers flitting over the keys as he entered their new destination.

Amy's eyes widened when she saw where they were headed. _**Leadworth? Really? Was that Rory who called you?**_

"No, it was Katherine," he told her, "I promised her we'd go back to Leadworth on the 1st of September, a few months after we left Rory. Apparently we're already two minutes late."

Amy groaned, still not entirely enamoured with the blonde. _**Figures. That girl's demanding.**_

"Hey, like you can talk."

_**Actually, genius, I can't. If you hadn't noticed.**_

"Oh, about that." He clicked his fingers, suddenly hit by a reminder of something he needed to say. "I installed a speaker, psychic-to-speech, in your chair the other day. You know the drill – think and words'll come out."

_**So that's where you disappeared off to last week – I thought you had abandoned me in some department store or something and run off.**_

"I'd never do that, Pond. Besides, I was back in two minutes."

_**True.**_ Given her current state, however, two minutes felt a lot like two hours.

He turned and grinned down at her. "So you OK with going back? Just for lunch."

_**I guess so, **_she replied, the merest hint of a grumble in her tone, the after-effects of the reminder of the blonde-haired girl._** I did sort of promise Rory Christmas lunch**_, she recalled, _**but we missed that, so I owe him one.**_

The Doctor smiled sympathetically at her, knowing that she still cared deeply for her ex-fiancée, before throwing the flight lever as the TARDIS shuddered into motion.

* * *

><p>"So you reckon they'll stick around for lunch?" Katherine Broad asked as she replaced the sonic phone on the table.<p>

"Doesn't matter what _they_ want. I'm making them stick around, even if Jack has to rip up the TARDIS console room or whatever," Rory Williams replied.

The blonde laughed as the pair sat in the garden chairs, waiting for the blue police box to arrive.

September came with a rather dismal, grey day, but nothing could dampen the blonde's excitement at being able to cavort around all of time and space again. The taster she'd got some months ago had only server to whet her appetite and boy was she hungry for more. "So you'll be fine without us?"

Rory snorted. "Yeah, I think I'll manage in the five minutes you're gone." They both burst out laughing at that – time travel. It really was ridiculous, wasn't it?

Katherine's smile dampened slightly, a meaningful, serious light in her hazel eyes. "Before they get here, though, I just want to say that you've been bloody amazing these last few months. It must have been crazy tough for you, giving up Amy like that."

He sighed. "It still is, in a way. But I've moved on from that as best I can now. You've been a great help, and Jack too. Thank you for that."

She reached across to place her palm atop his hand. "No problem. So how do you reckon Amy's going?"

His face clouded. "That depends."

She bit her lip. "You reckon she found your note?"

"For sure. But did she listen? And is she OK?"

She glared reprovingly at him. "Of course she's OK. She's Amy. Although on the same note, that probably means she didn't listen."

He chuckled. "I suppose you're right."

A wind suddenly picked up out of nowhere and a whirring noise emerged out of thin air. Katherine broke into a broad grin as the police box faded into view before them.

_Three minutes late._

The TARDIS doors opened and the Doctor, wearing the same tweed jacket, the same bowtie, stuck his out, filled with his usual verve.

"Right place? House, garden, trees – yes, right place. Date..." he sniffed the air, as if searching for some trace scent that would tell him the date. "First of September. Good. Weather's a bit rubbish, but oh well."

"Glad to see you too, Doctor," Katherine cut across the Time Lord's ramble, leaning back in her chair, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

"And I see you're still quite the ball of wit, Ms Broad. Sorry about the lateness. And Rory! Good old Rory Williams, how have you been?" He bounded over to shake the young man's hand, gripping it in his broad palms and vigorously shaking it up and down.

"Good, actually. Mostly thanks to Kat, to be honest."

"Ah, I knew I'd left you in good hands." He smiled gratefully at the blonde, who predictably waved him off.

"Was nothing, seriously. So how long's it been for you?"

"A few months. It's March right now for us. We missed our Christmas lunch with you guys, so Amy thought we'd make it up today."

Rory blinked. "Christmas? In September?"

"March, actually, for us. Time travel, eh? Makes special days like Christmas more than a little flexible."

Katherine frowned. "Wait – so you're not coming to pick Jack and I up?"

"Oh, we might, depends on how Amy feels about the whole thing."

"I don't get it. What's the problem?"

"You'll find out soon enough," he replied cryptically.

It was Rory's turned to furrow his brow. "Is she OK?"

He sighed. "In a manner of speaking. Again, you'll find out soon enough."

"Right. So where is she now?"

"Oh, she's coming. Or at least, she should be coming." He turned and frowned, gazing intently at the police box as if listening for some signal that was otherwise inaudible to the others. After a second, he shook his head, sighing in exasperation. "Ugh. Lift's gone wibbly again. Give us a sec." And with that, he bounded back inside the TARDIS, the door swinging back and forth in his wake.

Katherine blinked in bemusement. "Since when was there a lift in the TARDIS?" She wondered aloud.

"Bloody good question. But I want to know what's happened to Amy first."

She smiled sympathetically at the young nurse. "Rory, I can see it in his eyes. He's taking good care of her, don't you worry about that."

"I can't help it. She's like a sister to me."

"And she's even more than that to him. Trust me, Rory."

He turned to her, his eyebrows raised. "You reckon they worked it out?"

"Positive. Can see it in his eyes, as I said. 'Bout time, too."

Rory nodded, an odd mix of emotions in his heart. Although he was definitely glad for both of them – after all, his last message to both of them had been to push them down this path, he couldn't help but feel a stabbing jealousy towards the man who was now with his ex-fiancée. He smothered the thought, cleansing it from his psyche. It wouldn't do to be clingy – that wouldn't be in Amy's best interests at all.

"I wonder what's taking them so long," he mused. The words had barely left his mouth when the Doctor reappeared in the doorway, holding it open to make sure it was at its maximum width. Rory opened his mouth to inquire what he was doing, but never got to say anything, because a second later his ability to speak had completely deserted him.

A silver-and-white wheelchair had rolled through the TARDIS doorway, halting just outside. Sitting on it, clothed in a plaid chequered shirt and knee-length skirt, her crimson hair tumbling down her shoulders, was Amy. Her forearms were placed on the armrests, her wrists hanging limply off the ends. Her shoulders were slumped and her neck tilted ever so slightly to the left, her face bearing an utterly blank, directionless expression that Rory recognised from some stroke victims he'd treated.

A computerised, female voice with a generic New Yorker accent emanated from the chair, Amy's lips having stayed firmly pressed together. "Hi Rory, Broad–oh bloody hell," the voice suddenly said, the wheelchair rotating on the spot in order to let Amy give the Doctor the best death glare she could manage given her state. "Is this _seriously_ what I sound like?"

* * *

><p>The Doctor couldn't help but notice that even without the ability to create a facial expression to back it up, the last of the Time Ladies still had quite a nasty death glare.<p>

_Damn. Was hoping to have found the regionalised model for the software. Evidently not._ "Yeah, sorry, I couldn't find any Scottish voices for the speaker."

_**So instead you make me sound like some American random who's probably been watching grass grow for the last month, **_Amy grumbled telepathically. Reservations about psychic communication or not, anything was better than the mirthless, stupefying electronic voice the wheelchair had been given._** Great. Thanks. As if my dignity hadn't already been right proper shredded already. I swear, when I get to use my arms, I'm going to smack you into next week.**_

It struck the Doctor that the list of things the red-head had promised to do once she regained full use of her body was growing very, very long and rather varied indeed. "I look forward to it."

_**I hope you do.**_ She turned to face Rory and Katherine again, who were still staring at her, mouths agape, utterly aghast.

"Yeah, OK, I know this looks kinda weird," she said using the speaker, her facial expression remaining disconcertingly vacant, "But trust me, it isn't nearly as bad as it seems."

Katherine seemed to find her voice first. _"_What happened?" She whispered, unable to believe the scene before her. The Doctor opened his mouth to explain, but Amy got in first.

_**No, Doctor. I'm not letting you take the fall for this one too.**_

"It was my fault, a stupid little mistake," Amy informed them. "We landed on a planet full of telepaths. But I forgot to put up my barriers, and next thing I knew I was in a coma for two months. When I woke up, I was totally paralysed."

_**That's a lie, Amelia, and you know it,**_ the Doctor rebuked telepathically, though secretly grateful she was standing up for him.

_**Of course it is. But I'm not gonna let you beat yourself up, or worse let Rory beat you up, for such a little thing.**_

_**A little thing? You can barely move and you can't speak properly!**_

_**It's only temporary.**_

"Right," Rory said slowly, his speech having returned to him. He was still throwing suspicious glares at the Time Lord every now and then. Amy couldn't help but notice this.

"Listen, Rory, I know what you're thinking, but it's not permanent. And the Doctor's been nothing less than amazing for me these last few months."

"Thanks_," _the Doctor told her gratefully.

_**You're welcome. It's an understatement to say the least.**_

Unexpectedly, Katherine broke into a smirk. "So you two worked it out at last, huh?"

Amy had a sudden urge stand up and hold the Doctor's hand at that moment, twining her fingers through his, her chest bursting with pride. But, of course, she couldn't. "Yep. Although he still owes me a proper first date."

The Doctor frowned. "What, taking you to the Moulin Rouge in 1890 didn't count? Or the first Olympic Games?"

_**Not to sound ungrateful or anything, Doctor, but it's hard to be all romantic when you're stuck in a wheelchair and can't properly pronounce any words longer than one syllable.**_

"You did your best nonetheless."

_**True. Still owe me one, though. And why the hell are you complaining, anyway?**_

"Who said I was?"

_**Back to answering questions with more questions, huh Doctor?**_

"Back to the hypocrisy, huh Pond?"

_**Shut up.**_

"Make me."

_**When I can walk again, I will.**_

"Um, if you're done talking to yourself, Doctor," Rory cut across them.

"Sorry," the Doctor replied sheepishly. "I think Amy prefers to talk to me telepathically rather than use the speaker."

_**Got that right.**_

Katherine shook her head. "Come inside," she told them. "Jack should have finished cooking by now. And then you can explain properly what the hell happened."

* * *

><p><strong>Yes, they're back. I like having them around (amongst other reasons that I'll keep closer to my chest), and I've done what I needed to do with the two Time Lords alone.<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>I'm starting to get really annoyed with FF "adding" 800-1000 words for every chapter. Minor thing, I know, but...<br>**


	26. Always Looking Out

**Er yeah so I don't have an excuse for the delay on this one. Just didn't feel entirely happy with it for ages. Sorry. Anyway...**

**Yay, more reviews! This is the second of the two slower-paced, transitional chapters before we dive into what I suspect will be a fairly lengthy and quite ambitious arc... which will be the last before we finally find out what all that white business is. I hope. My plans have already changed quite often up to this point.**

**Hopefully you folk don't mind the slower, talky-talky pace of this chapter (which was ****_very_**** lengthy, but I cut out a section at the end to stick onto the next chapter). I suspect we'll miss it before long...**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 26. Always Looking Out: 22 March 2011<strong>

_Another day, another conversation, another ridiculously awkward silence, _the Doctor mused as he wrung his hands distractedly, glancing at the once engaged couple. Neither of them were quite managing to meet the other's eyes, although Rory had a deeply concerned furrow still etched into his brow.

_Becoming a pattern, this._

The Doctor, Amy and her ex-fiancée had retired to the sitting room as soon as they were inside, Katherine shuffling off to help Jack finish off lunch. Getting inside had proved to be an interesting challenge, due to the presence of a small step at the front door – which, of course, presented something of a problem for Amy. It wasn't exactly taxing for the Doctor to lift her the half-foot required to place her on the step, but by his own admission he could have been gentler. A healthy amount of telepathic gutter-minded abuse reminded him of this fact.

"So..." the Doctor began, as ever trying to play the icebreaker.

No answer. Just the distant chatter of Jack and Katherine in the background, and the unmistakable noises of an opened oven.

"How's Leadworth?" He asked, having another crack.

"Same as ever, really," Rory replied, somewhat more tersely than he'd intended. He couldn't help but glance at Amy, the way her head rolled to the side, the way she stared aimlessly at the opposite wall...

The Doctor sighed. This clearly wasn't going to work whilst he was in the room, he could sense the coiled snake within the young nurse. He couldn't say he blamed him, either, but it would do no one any good if he took a fist to the face. "I'll see how lunch is going. I'm sure you two have plenty to chat about in the meantime." He stood and left, ignoring the sudden stream of psychic objections emanating from the Time Lady.

_**You wanted this, didn't you? **_He reminded her as he left the room.

_**Doctor, seriously. Leaving me in a room with my ex? Where'd you learn that one?**_

_**I'm not the jealous type, Amelia. Don't worry, I'm not letting you go any time soon.**_

_**Mutual.**_

Amy sighed."So," she asked, using the despised speaker on her wheelchair to talk once again.

Unexpectedly, Rory burst out laughing, the tension shattering like speared glass. "I can't believe I'm talking to a _wheelchair._"

"Oh, that's nothing," Amy replied, putting as much nonchalance as the generic American voice could handle into its tone. "A few weeks after we left, we went to a planet populated by mouths. Literally, mouths. No arms or anything, just a great big chattering mouth, like those toys you see in cartoons."

Rory raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Touchy folk, too, and faster than they look. We never quite worked out what we'd done to piss them off, although I still reckon the Doctor made a joke about them not brushing their teeth that got up their nerves."

He chuckled for a moment, but the levity died as he was brought back to her current state. "So when did, um, this happen?"

"First of December. It was our first date, too..." She trailed off wistfully. "He still owes me one of those."

He smiled wanly at her. "So you really did get together."

"Yeah. That note really helped, by the way. Thank you for that."

"It was the least I could do. So how's it been? You know, with _him_." He couldn't avoid putting the emphasis on the last word.

"Well, considering I was in a coma for two months then paralysed for the last six weeks, not much fun. But," she added, before Rory could respond, "He's been amazing for me, Rory. Absolutely amazing. I couldn't have possibly asked for more."

"Do you think you... well... um..."

"Love him?" She paused. "Yeah, yeah, I think I do. But I promise you, Rory," she hastened to add, "I felt the same way about you when we were together. In a way, in a different sort of way, I still do."

"Always looking out for me, huh?"

"Always."

They sat quietly for a moment, considering the other's words. As always, Amy was the first to break the silence.

"So, my sonic phone. Been putting it to good use?"

He laughed – the block-like device had caused Jack, Katherine and him no end of head-scratching over the past few weeks. "I don't understand how the hell you used that thing. There's no rhyme or reason to how the buttons relate to the functions at all. Took us a week for Jack to work out how to actually call you."

She would have shrugged if she could. "I dunno, really. Just seemed to come naturally. Opening and closing doors is definitely nine, though, and five always does something use-" She suddenly cut off mid-sentence, her eyes fluttering closed. The colour had flooded out of her cheeks, her fists clenched and her knuckles white. He could hear soft, pitiful whimpering noises coming from between her tightly-closed lips. As an experienced nurse, he instantly recognised the onset of extreme pain.

_What the hell? _

"Amy!" He stood, beginning to move across to try and deliver whatever assistance he could. Before he'd taken one step, however, he felt a flutter of air and saw the Doctor appear in front of her as if summoned magically. He leant down before the red-head, unfolding her palm to let her squeeze his fingers, his other hand brushing beads of sweat off her forehead. Rory could only stand and watch as her eyes opened, agony riven within their green depths as they found the Time Lord's face.

"It's OK, Amelia. I'm here, you'll be OK," he murmured. A violent shudder ran through her and her eyelids closed again.

"I know it hurts, I know. You can get through this. Trust me." The shudders increased in intensity and frequency, sweat pouring down her face. A tear squeezed out of the corner of her closed eyes, and was instantly brushed away by the Time Lord as he continued to whisper soft words of reassurance to her, switching after some time to a language that Rory recognised as Gallifreyean – simply because he couldn't make head or tail of the ornate, flowery tongue.

After a minute, her hand finally relaxed, her fingers releasing the Doctor's. Colour returned to her cheeks and her eyes opened again, tears continuing to leak down her cheeks. The Doctor leant forward and kissed the girl on the forehead. "That's my girl. Told you that you'd get through," he murmured.

Her eyes met the Doctor's, their emerald depths filled with shock and helplessness, an expression that was a dagger through Rory's heart. There was nothing, absolutely nothing he could do to help her now. Her mouth opened, slowly, her lower lip trembling.

"Hurts... hurts... so much..." he heard Amy say for the first time, her voice an octave lower than usual and heavily slurred, the words barely distinguishable but given the context completely unmistakable.

"I know," the Doctor told her, pressing his lips to her brow again, stroking her hair gently. "I know it hurts. But I'm afraid it'll only get worse before it gets better. This is an unavoidable part of your mind rebuilding itself. If I could do something for it, I would, but... I'm sorry."

Amazingly, Amy's lips curled into a smile, the first time her face had changed expression since she'd arrived in Leadworth, and she spoke again, despite the fact that she was clearly struggling with even the most basic words. "Sa... stop... say... ing... se... sor... sorry."

He smiled and leaned forward, letting her rest her forehead on his whilst he rubbed the back of her neck sympathetically. "No, Pond, I don't think I ever will." He stood and turned to face Rory. "Sorry about that, probably confused the hell out of you."

"What the hell just happened?" Rory asked in a breathy whisper, his eyes still fixed on his ex-fiancée, her eyes having closed again, her head having rolled onto her left shoulder as she recovered from the ordeal.

"After-effects of the overload. Essentially, what happened was that her nervous system got completely burnt out. Fried. Wiped clean. It's rebuilding itself now, but slowly."

"So... was there anything... permanent?"

"Thankfully, no, her final defences ensured that no lasting damage was done. However, regaining control of a Time Lord nervous system from scratch is a long-winded process, as she basically has to relearn how to use all her muscles again, including those dealing with walking and talking, obviously. In addition, there are also, erm, side effects from the rebuild, as you just saw."

"But you said – you said they'd get worse before they get better."

"Unfortunately, yes, I think so. Getting control of one's body, learning to walk and talk properly – that's a process that usually takes years. We're compressing it into a few months. Brains simply aren't naturally used to such a pace. From time to time, there'll be consequences for that."

"Couldn't you just wait, then? Just let things take their natural course?"

He sighed. "The last time I suggested that to Amy she yelled psychically for a good half-hour at me. Think that tells you everything you need to know."

Rory shook his head. "Well, at least she hasn't changed."

"No," the speaker on Amy's wheelchair suddenly interjected. "No, I haven't."

* * *

><p>On account of Amy's weakened state, they decided to have their lunch in the sitting room. This was despite her constant protestations that she was really fine, and she'd jerkily tried to make her way out of the room. However, her mind was in no fit state to make the sort of precise commands that navigating the spaces between the chairs and other pieces of furniture would require. The Doctor eventually had to disable the motor with his sonic after she'd come within an inch of knocking over a vase, and manually push the wheelchair back into position. This was an act which earned him a healthy amount of bilingual abuse and threats, both telepathically and using the speaker (for Rory's benefit), but he didn't care.<p>

Lunch turned out to be roast beef with associated salad and freshly baked bread. The smell of the food as Jack and Katherine carried it into the room – which had been hastily rearranged to fit a few extra tables – instantly invigorated all of Amy's senses, pushing away any thoughts she might have had about having a rest in the meantime.

"This is bloody delicious, Jack, thanks," she told him gratefully as the Doctor forked another piece of tender meat into her waiting mouth.

"Was nothing, really. Kat helped heaps."

Amy made a non-committal grunting noise, which drew a smirk from all present. She was trying her hardest to be friendly towards the blonde, but old habits died a hard death.

"So where've you been? I'm sure there are plenty of long stories you've built up over the last few months."

"Eh, not really. Most of it was me stuck in a coma, and since then we've-OK," she declared suddenly, "This is ridiculous. Doctor, can I have my sonic?"

The Time Lord sighed. "Come on, Amy, it's not _that_ bad."

_**Please?**_

He shook his head in amusement, before reaching into his tweed jacket and retrieving a silver-gold sonic screwdriver, a crimson crystal held in the claw-like appendages at the end. Amy twisted her wrist slowly to take the device as he placed it in her palm.

_**Wrong way around, dolt.**_

He chuckled and flipped the device around so it was pointing down at the wheelchair.

_**Thank you.**_

Her fingers closed around the device, her index and ring fingers squeezing on the activation button. Sparks flew from the side of the wheelchair, causing the three humans present to recoil in alarm.

"Right. So that should be better now," the speaker suddenly intoned, having taken on a much livelier Scottish accent – not quite Amy's voice, but a close approximation. "So, yeah, as I was saying, I was sort of in a coma for two months..." she continued, now much more comfortable with the identity of the electronic voice her wheelchair had taken.

Soon, she and the Doctor found themselves regaling Rory, Katherine and Jack of the experiences ever since they'd left them in Leadworth at the start of November (or late June, depending on the point of view). All three laughed, gasped and shook their heads in disbelief at exactly the right moments as the Doctor described the soaring silver colonnades of Apalapucia, or Amy told them about the sparkling, entrancing Imperial diamond they'd seen the previous week. Eventually, and rather inevitably, the discussion turned to the Time Lord and Lady themselves – and specifically, their relationship.

"So when'd you two work it out?" Jack asked, forever the matchmaker.

"The day before the overload, so almost a month after we left you here," the Doctor replied.

"If you don't mind me asking, what made you, um, see the light? Was it any one moment?"

"No."

"Sort of," Amy replied over him. Everyone turned and looked at the blank-faced red-head in surprise.

"Really?"

"Well, not in that sort of way. After you left, I acted like a complete idiot for a month. In denial, I guess. After Rory left..." She paused for a moment. Clearly the experience was still painful for her. "After we left you guys here, I just sort of went into a shell. I just felt so alone, and I kind of convinced myself that that was how I was going to be forever, just a sad, stupid little girl without anyone to help her. No parents, no Rory, nothing. And I guess even back then I was in love with him, but I didn't want to think about it. In denial, as I said."

"I reckon you both were, honestly, for a while before," Jack pointed out.

"Oi. I was still engaged back then."

"Fair point." He glanced at her pale, slender hands – they were free of jewellery. _Hmm. Strange._ "So what changed?"

"Well, it was the note Rory left me." Her eyes shifted to fix themselves on her ex-fiancée. "The one in which you told me to move on with my life. To not be sad and lonely all the time, which is exactly what I was doing."

"Oh. So that was it?"

"Sort of. Not straight away, though. The moment I finished reading the note I sort of... lost it."

Rory looked away, his mind suddenly filled with the image of Amy sobbing uncontrollably on the floor beside her bed, ring box in hand. Which was precisely what had happened.

"I don't understand," Katherine interjected. "Where does the Doctor come into this?"

Amy threw a glance at the Doctor as if trying to silently communicate with him – which was probably not far from the truth.

"Well, right now," the Doctor said after a few seconds. "I knew Amy was feeling sad and lonely, and I tried to make it up to her by taking her to all those places we told you about. But I didn't know about the note, so I wasn't exactly expecting to see Amy on the floor, crying her lungs out."

"And then what did you do?"

"Nothing. Was sort of taken out of my hands. I'd just entered when Amy, um, she, well, attacked me."

The blonde blinked in bemusement. _Attacked? That doesn't seem to gel properly..._ She then noticed the colour creeping up the Time Lord's neck. "Oh. _Attacked._"

"Yes." _Thank goodness I didn't need to explain that._ His gratitude was quickly shafted, however, when the lips of both Katherine and Jack curled into mischievous smirks.

"Is this where we ask the kids to go to bed?"

"Oi," Amy interjected, "We didn't get that far. He stopped me before I could even get the bow-tie undone. I really wasn't thinking straight at the time, I was just so lonely, and he walked in at exactly the wrong moment. So I went for it."

_Is that guilt I hear in her voice?_ "So was that your... epiphany?"

"Nah. After that, he sort of comforted me a bit, told me I'd never be alone, all that stuff. It sounds stupid, I know, but I really, really needed it at the time. Thank you for that, by the way, it meant a lot to me. Still does."

The Doctor smiled warmly at the ginger, reaching across to entwine his fingers with hers. "It was the least I could do."

Amy squeezed his hand briefly before continuing. "So I asked him to sleep with me that night. No, not like _that,_" she added, having seen three pairs of eyebrows disappear into their owners' hairlines. "Just to give me some company. And it was while he was asleep and I was still awake that it just sort of... hit me. That I was being stupid. That I could have anything and everything I wanted, all I had to do was take it, and it was lying right next to me. So I did."

"So _that's_ why you were basically lying on top of me when I woke up," the Doctor realised.

"Yeah. Don't tell me you didn't like it though."

"You were having a nightmare at the time, which I got half of," he pointed out.

"True. Less of an issue now, though, thanks to you."

The comment was innocent enough, but it perked the Time Lord's senses. _Is it now? That's good. Maybe this really is helping her._

"So that's it?"

"That's it. More or less told the Doctor that hey, I like you, you like me, why the hell not? Less words, though, more via the snogging medium. He was a bit reluctant at first, thought he was putting me in too much danger. But that was half the reason I'd fallen for him in the first place."

"Well, if you'd bothered to look in a mirror, you might realise _why_ I was worried, Amy."

"S'only temporary."

"And painful, if you've forgotten."

"I'm a big girl. I can handle it."

He shook his head – she really was irrepressible. But he couldn't forget the agony in her eyes, the deafening screams echoing through his mind. Nor, evidently, was Rory so willing to forget her ordeal, given how he was currently staring at her, his eyes shot with astonished disbelief at her bravado and overriding concern for her welfare. Amy had evidently noticed this, and given that the last thing she wanted was to be mollycoddled right now, she decided a change of tack was in order.

"So how about you lot? Leadworth still as boring as ever, I see." The Doctor chuckled at that, agreeing wholeheartedly with the assessment.

"S'not that bad," Rory replied. "No one trying to kill us, for one thing. Less running up and down corridors."

"True, although there's not been much running of late on my end either. Rolling, more like."

"Yeah, that's a fair point. But nah, life's been OK. Took me a while to get over the break-up, to be fair, but Kat here was a great help."

"I told you, it was nothing," the blonde replied.

"So have you found someone yet?" Amy asked, inverting the conversation. "Someone special?"

"Well..." He couldn't help but throw the blonde a quick glance as he spoke. Unfortunately – or possibly quite fortunately – she happened to do the exact same in reverse, briefly locking their eyes. He quickly averted his eyes, hoping Amy hadn't noticed. "Not quite yet, but I'm sure I'll find someone soon."

Mercifully, for once, she hadn't. "Good. I'm sure whoever you end up finding will be special enough, and if they're good enough for you, it's good enough for me. Although we did meet this rather hot and single girl on a super-colony about three thousand light years from here. Quarter-alien, but. Kinda hyper, too..."

Rory leaned back in his chair, listening peacefully as the Time Lord pair dove into another account of some scarcely-believable adventure. A part of him missed it, tramping around the universe with them... but, really, he was just a nurse.

It was way above his salary.

* * *

><p>"So I <em>promise<em> that next Christmas, I won't be in a coma. Promise."

Rory let out a disbelieving laugh as the wheelchair rolled slowly through the garden and towards the police box. The cloud had lifted ever so slightly, the sun threatening to force its way through the dank layer of grey blanketing the village. "You always took Christmas lunch far too seriously."

"Hey, it was one of the only days where I _didn't_ have to cook," Amy reminded him. "Oh, by the way, how's Aunt Sharon?"

"Oh, she's OK, relatively speaking. She's a bit cut up about not ever seeing you again."

Amy blinked several times. "Er – what do you mean?"

"Oh yeah, about that," Jack suddenly called out from inside the TARDIS, where he was helping the Doctor with maintenance. "I was kinda in a rush with the Retcon, so the story about why you weren't getting married and why you aren't living here any more is that you're, well, um..."

Amy narrowed her eyes. "Yes?"

"Missing, presumed dead. Drowned in the river. They even got a little headstone and an empty grave for you."

Amy opened and closed her mouth several times. _Missing, presumed dead._ "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Sorry. Was in a bit of a hurry, and there were a _lot_ of people to get to."

"Well, that's clean, I guess."

"Quite," Jack affirmed, relieved at not being subjected to the sharper edges of Amy's mood swings. "Do you want to go see her?"

"Yeah, later. We're in a time machine, and it's probably best that I can walk and talk first." She turned the wheelchair to face her ex-fiancée. "Take care while I'm gone, yeah?"

He smiled. "I told the Doctor to make your next visit in five minutes my time. I won't be waiting long."

She laughed through the speaker, an odd, distorted noise. "OK. Might be a bit longer for me, though."

"Don't make it too long. Before you go, by the way, I want to give you a diary."

"I already have a diary," Amy pointed out – although it was rapidly filling up, as she was very diligent in recording every single extraordinary experience between its TARDIS-blue covers. If only to assure herself that yes, those things really did happen.

"Not just any diary." He hesitated, before reaching into his pocket, pulling out a tiny, black spiral-bound diary. It took a moment for her to recognise it, before an audible gasp escaped her lips.

"Is that-"

"Yeah. Found it the other day. I reckon it's important that you have it."

"No. No, I don't want it." Amy was well aware that the contents of this diary were _not_ pleasant, and in many senses acutely shameful to her.

"You can't keep running from your past, Amy. Do you know how much it worried me that despite the fact that I was going to marry you, there's so much about you I still don't know? What you think, _how _you think?"

Amy's eyes widened at the question, affronted. "I told you everything-"

"You told me everything you felt I _needed_ to know. I'm not blaming you, Amy." He smiled gently and stroked the smooth contours of her cheek, just as he'd done so often once upon a time. "I know you've had a hard life, and you've had to be so, so strong just to get through."

"I don't want pity, I-"

"Don't need it, I know. I'm just saying, I understand why you keep your cards close to your chest, why you don't always show people what's really going on. It's why I told the Doctor to stay out of your head."

"Really?" Amy often forgot – or denied – just how well her ex-fiancée knew her.

"Yeah. It's your memories, it's your right to show him as you choose." Unspoken were the identity of the memories that Rory was referring to, but they both knew exactly what he meant. "When you choose. And Amy, at some point, you _will_ have to show him."

"But even _you_ don't really know what happened there."

"I know enough. I saw what it did to you. I saw what you became. What you put in this diary."

"Which is why I don't want it. I don't want to become like... like _that_ ever again."

"The Doctor thinks you will, if you keep going on like this. It scares him, Amy. Scares him more than it scares me, even."

"He's _wrong._ I will _not_ become that. _I will not._" Her eyes had ignited, blazing wells of emerald flame conveying her unshakeable determination, repressed anger rising to the surface once more. There was no way she would let those parts of her mind out of their carefully reconstructed prison. No way Rory could convince her she was wrong.

But he knew she was. And the consequences... he couldn't contemplate it.

"I'm not asking you to read it, Amy. I'm just asking you to take it. For me. Please."

She gazed at him, saw the simplicity, the honesty of his request. His sky-blue puppy-dog eyes applied the perfect pressure to the weakest spots in her armor, her stone-cold facade, piercing through her steel resolve. "OK," she relented. "Fine. Just for you. Put it in the pocket."

He smiled gratefully at her, placing the spiral-bound book in a little pouch on the side of the tech-covered wheelchair. "Thanks, Amy. You won't regret it."

"I'm not going to read it, though," she reminded him.

"I know, but it's important to me that you at least have it." In reality, that wasn't anywhere near good enough for him – she _needed_ to read it. The Doctor needed to read it. She needed to face her internal horrors that she'd been burying for years and the Doctor had to truly know _who_ he was falling in love with, had to know everything about her.

But they would work it out in time.

"Always looking out for me, huh?" She asked wryly.

"Always."

"Mutual. Goodbye, Rory." She raised her wrist and gave him a weak approximation of a wave.

"Bye, Amy. Stay safe," he replied, giving her a tight hug, lifting her off the wheelchair, briefly taking in her scent, her essence before releasing and turning to head back inside. Back to a normal Leadworth life.

But only for five minutes.

* * *

><p><strong>100k words!<strong>

**The next plot arc, by the way, will be very roughly inspired by Peter F. Hamilton's "Void" trilogy. Fine epic-scale space-opera series, has one absolutely killer chapter in the third book that I'd like to try to do something similar to one day. Pity about the slight cop-out ending, but oh well, still a fine read.**

**How close my plot actually resembles it is very much up in the air, so don't feel as if you automatically know what's going to happen next if you've read it.**


	27. A Reckless And Impulsive Girl

**So, uni this year is FINISHED! Christ, what an insane semester/year that was. More so than last year in some ways.**

**If you haven't already, watch the "Night And The Doctor" shorts. Very, very good, some important things touched upon (about bloody time they mentioned the Library again) and lovely character interaction. "Good Night" deserves a special mention. It's a shame I won't be able to replicate it here – that sort of Amy/Doctor interaction relies on the best-friend relationship of S6, which I've obviously ditched by necessity.**

**Just a word on length. I know that as a general rule, the stop-start way that stories are updated here usually means longer is better, but I want this story to read properly as a whole (which probably doesn't apply to the first five chapters or so, I admit). That means pacing is a genuinely big concern of mine, as is making sure chapters end at sensible points. That's my main two issues w.r.t. chapter length.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 27. A Reckless And Impulsive Girl: 22 March 2011<strong>

The moment Rory closed the door and left her life again, Amy put the diary in the pouch at the side of the wheelchair out of her mind. She had already made her mind up that it would remain unopened if she had anything to do with it. She rotated the wheelchair and headed back towards into the time machine. "So you lot done in there? We good to go yet?" She moved through the doorway and into the console room, stopping just past the entrance, her eyes transfixed on a blonde-haired girl lounging nonchalantly on a chair.

"_**Um." **_The computerised voice stripped much of the beauty of her second language, but there was no doubting her meaning, or the sharpness of her tone.

"Yes, Pond?" The Doctor queried from beneath the console, still busy at work.

"_**Explain. Now."**_

"Ah, yes, um, I didn't just promise to go back today, I promised to pick them up."

"_**And you were planning to mention this to me... when?"**_ An ominous rumble was building in the psychic field, one of the few things that could quicken the Doctor's double-pulse without fail.

"In about twenty seconds."

"_**I'm in a generous mood," **_she told him, despite feeling anything but. "_**I'll give you three guesses what I'm going to say."**_

He gulped. "Thank you for fixing the lift?"

"_**Strike one. Although cheers if you have."**_

"Wasn't it lovely that we got to-"

"_**Strike two."**_

He sighed. _**"Amy, really, I keep my promises. I told you – I'm not the jealous or the easily distracted type."**_

"_**Funny, last I checked your attention span was an average of four seconds."**_

Even at this awkward juncture, he managed to look affronted. _**"Seven. At a minimum."**_

"OK, sorry to butt in," Katherine interjected, "but do you two mind talking in English for the benefit of the rest of us?"

"Shush, Katherine. Not a good moment."

"It's Kate now, by the way. Or Kat."

Amy ignored her. _**"Give me a reason why I shouldn't knock her out and drag her out of the TARDIS right now."**_

"_**One, you can't."**_

"_**Wanna bet?"**_

"_**Not really. Two, this was only ever a temporary arrangement – at this time, there are two Katherine Broads running around, within a few hundred miles of each other – temporal paradox fuel if there ever was one."**_

Amy paused at this as she moved onto the lift. "_**Okay. Fair point. So I'll knock her out and leave her in the middle of Africa or something.**_

"_**Amy...**_**"**

"_**Seriously, Doctor. Not having it. Do you seriously think that she can just walk in here and – what the hell was that?"**_

A deep, reverberating gong-like noise had reverberated around the room. A jolt ran up the Doctor's spine, his eyes widening in horror. Katherine – or Kate, rather – straightened, her brow furrowed.

"Er – what was that noise?"

"It sounds... like something I heard back when I was a kid," Amy mused, her contempt of the blonde briefly forgotten as the memory stirred itself - of engines phasing and a raggedy man rushing back to his police box wearing a horrified expression on his face.

The same man who now was rushing up to the console with the exact same expression, spluttering noises of disbelief.

"Jack! Close the door!" He yelled at the immortal, who instantly executed the order. Another deep gonging reverberation rang through the console room. "Come on, dear, what's the matter with you?" He began pumping a lever, drawing a pained wheezing noise from the time machine in response. "Easy now, it's just boring old Leadworth, nothing to be afraid of."

Evidently the time machine disagreed, because an explosion of sparks cascaded from the console, causing the Doctor to recoil in alarm. An almighty groan wound its way from the central column and the entire room lurched violently sideways, knocking everyone to the ground.

"Right. That was strange," Kate declared, picking herself off the glass floor where she'd been thrown off the chair. "What the hell just happened? We still in Leadworth?"

"Emergency dematerialisation," the Doctor told her, clambering to his feet. "The TARDIS detected something nasty, self-phased and ran away to a random point in time and space."

"That's... that's bad, isn't it?"

"Yes. But we should be fine now."

"Wait... isn't Rory still-"

"Chances are he's fine, the TARDIS only reacts to nasty _temporal_ events, not alien invasions – she loves those. Temporal events like, for example, paradoxes." He studied the blonde carefully. "Did you, by any chance, arrive in Leadworth on the 1st of September?"

She shook her head. "No. Didn't go back to Leadworth once after I left in late '09. Why?"

He frowned, turning to inspect the console. "Hmm. Strange." _Why would she pack up and go like that..._

"Ahem," an electronic, vaguely Scottish accented voice called out from the lift, which had paused operation halfway between two levels.

"Yes, Pond?" He replied, still distracted by the console.

"If you're quite finished."

He turned to see her sprawled across the lift, immobile, in front of her wheelchair, her head turned upwards and giving him the mother of all death glares. He spluttered a hasty apology and leaped downwards to place her back in the wheelchair, stroking the hair carefully out of her indignant eyes as he did so.

"Sorry, Amy. Should have noticed."

"Don't do it again, dolt."

"I intend not to," he murmured, giving her a brief kiss on the forehead by way of atonement. "Now I have to find out what's going on. Give us a mo."

He clambered back up to the console, inspecting it closely. "OK, so, no major damage, all flight surfaces intact, so we should be OK to go." He typed in a deep-space destination, being aware of the inherent dangers that could await them, the TARDIS having fled to a random point in time and space. He pulled down the flight lever to set the machine sailing into the Time Vortex again.

And watched, stunned, as the lights in the TARDIS flickered and died, plunging the foursome into darkness.

_No. Oh no no no. Bad bad bad._

"What the hell just happened?" Kate asked quietly as the Doctor span around the console, randomly flicking levers and twiddling dials. He slammed his palm down on a large button and the TARDIS hummed, the lights flickering back to life.

"So that's it? We OK?" Jack had reached the console. The Doctor's back was turned to him, meaning he couldn't see the horror in the eyes of both the Time Lord and Lady, who were both well aware that his little sequence of commands had simply diverted the power supply to the secondary generators – they were still more or less stuck in a dead time machine.

"Something drained the primary power supply," he informed him grimly, his jaw set. "Not a drop of juice left. I've got rid of the cinema and bowling alley, which gives us enough backup power to the lights and lifts, but we don't have enough juice in the tanks to move the TARDIS one foot, let alone go anywhere in time."

Kate's jaw hit the floor. "Wait, so we're stuck, and we have no clue where?"

"Basically."

* * *

><p>The twittering of birdsong filled the crisp forest air, melodic and enticing. The gentle trickling of the stream was the only other noise present, a image of tranquillity and peace all-too-rare in this place. Towering above were several dark, snow-capped peaks beneath a blue-red sky, the earliest rays of sunlight glinting a purple-white hue across their tops. The forest at their feet was one of the few genuinely protected sanctuaries left in this place, for the sudden population explosion had meant that space was starting to run a little thin – soon, people would have to have their land allocations reduced by ten percent to a mere two hectares each, something which was unthinkable just a few years previously. So everyone, rather than spreading upwards as was the norm on almost every known planet, they spread sideways, filling up every nook and cranny of available space.<p>

Unfortunately, that meant intruding on some of the pristine forest created decades before, leaving only a few pockets of peace, untouched by human hands. Luckily, this was one, but only by necessity, the result of the Phi Forest being barred from all access. The stunning tranquillity of the stream-bank in the forest was hence all the more special for there being no one to witness it.

Until, of course, the doors of a police box which had perched itself on the embankment swung open and a man in a bow-tie, hands drawn cautiously to his chest, stepped out.

"Not deep space! That's a stroke of luck. Air is breathable, also a good sign. Actually, not just breathable." He took a deep, invigorating breath of the clean, dewy air. "Ah, that's better. Amazing stuff, clean air, don't often see it. Or breathe it, to be accurate."

"Looks like an ordinary forest," Kate commented as she followed the Time Lord outside along with Jack, who was bemusedly inspecting his vortex manipulator, which had also seemingly decided to absent itself from the realm of the working.

"It does, doesn't it?"

"So we've just ended up somewhere else on Earth?"

"Oh, goodness, no. We're definitely not on Earth, in fact, we're not within ten thousand light years of Earth."

"How d'you know that? Isn't the scanner inactive?" Amy asked from just inside, apprehensive about heading out onto an unknown planet – or, more immediately, onto ground that may or may not be entirely flat.

"Because I've been to every habitable planet, moon, space station and space-truck stop within ten thousand light years of Earth, and this isn't one of them. Doesn't smell right."

"So we've landed on some random planet that we can't get off and you have absolutely no idea where or when it is."

"Basically."

A computerised groan. "You're bloody inspirational, ya know that?"

"Thank you. I try."

"I'm guessing that whatever drained the TARDIS engines is whatever's broken my vortex manipulator," Jack surmised, gingerly prodding the now-useless device.

"Did it really? Interesting. Anyway, I vote we follow this river somewhere, try to find out more about this place."

"Erm – not to be a spoilsport or anything," Jack began, "but we've got no idea how far away it is. Not to mention Amy can't deal with rocky, uneven ground at the moment."

"All very true, which is why Amy's not going with us."

"What?" Amy cut in. "Why not? I can deal with some uneven ground."

"No, Amy. You're in no fit shape to deal with anything, and we have absolutely no idea what's out there."

"Looks peaceful enough," she pointed out.

"Haven't you been around long enough to know 'looking peaceful' means precisely nothing?"

"I don't care. Wherever you go, I go."

"Not this time. We don't discuss these things, Amy – I say, you do."

"Doctor-"

He turned to face her, his piercing blue eyes meeting her wild green. _**"Amelia, no.**_"

She opened her mouth to protest further, but a twinkle of the half-indoors-half-outdoors light in the Time Lord's eye caught her attention. The merest flicker, but she could see a reflection of lives loved and lost, crumbling in his hands and leaving only despair in its wake. All the pain and the love it had brought...

"Alright. Fine. I'll stay. But who's staying behind, then? I still can't do _that_ much by myself," she pointed out – although feeling was starting to return to her arms again.

The Doctor pondered this for a moment, placing a finger on his lips. After a few seconds he reached his decision with a click of her fingers. "Kathe-Kate, rather. You're up," he told the blonde, pointing at her.

"What?" Both girls exclaimed, Kate's blank shock only matched by the abject horror in Amy's eyes.

"Don't be so alarmed. I'm sure you'll two will get along swimmingly whilst Jack and I are gone."

"Why couldn't Jack stay?" Amy demanded, even more appalled by the arrangement. Kate made a noise indicating her seconding of the question, although for very different reasons – babysitting had not been on her agenda as part of TARDIS life.

"As I said, we don't know what's out there. Jack's got more experience, he'll be able to deal with whatever comes out. You, though, you've hardly been around. Even Amy probably would be cut out for this if she were fit and well, we kind of need to be stealthy-stealthy."

"What are you trying to say, that I'm too noisy?"

"Well... Stroyet. Enra Prime. And that incident with the possessed garbage cans in Manchester. Twice."

"That was your fault!"

"Not the second and third times it wasn't."

Amy narrowed her eyes, pouting slightly. "I hate you."

"No you don't."

"I still don't like this plan either," Kate declared. "Doesn't sound like romping around time and space, really."

"Katherine, I'm sorry, but I need you to do this. As a favour for Amy, and for me. She needs someone here to help her and take of her, and I have no idea how long we'll be gone. We could be days. And besides," he smiled gently at her. "You said you wanted a chance to make it up to Amy, and say sorry. Here it is. So can you do this? For us?"

Amy was on the verge of saying that she really didn't need her help, thanks very much, but the Doctor silenced her with a glance, sensing what she was about to say. _**Amelia, please go along with this. It's important.**_

Kate sighed. "Alright. Fine. I'll go make tea or something." She turned with a huff and headed back towards the TARDIS interior. "Oh, and Amy, I hope you like spag-bol, because that's what I'm making for dinner," she called out behind her back, her sharp, clear tones echoing through the corridors.

The Doctor shook his head, chuckling, as he headed back inside to grab the materials they needed for their expedition. Minutes later, he returned with two large backpacks filled with food, spare clothing, two sleeping bags and a dimensionally-transcendental tent that he'd received for his 413th (or had it been his 314th?) birthday. "So you OK? Won't try and rip up the TARDIS while I'm gone?" He asked as he heaved one large pack into Jack's arms.

"I can't make any guarantees," Amy grumbled. "I still don't like this idea at all,"

"I know. But you should try. Besides," he curled his lip and leaned in front of her a whisper, moving back inside. "You might find she's more like you than you thought."

There was no mistaking the surge of horror that shot through Amy's eyes. "Gee, thanks. Excuse me while I go vomit."

The Time Lord let out a great booming laugh as he threw the oversized bag onto his back, ruffling her vivid crimson hair. "Don't worry about us while we're gone. We can take care of ourselves. And if you need to contact me – or vice versa – you know how."

"Fine." She bit her bottom lip, nestling between her teeth, before ordering the wheelchair to roll forward, straight into the Time Lord's knees. He collapsed with a yelp – right into her lap, just as she'd planned. Before he could react further, she had leaned forward and planted the deepest, most passionate kiss she could on his mouth. His initial shock passing, he placed his palm on the back of her head, pulling her in to deepen the kiss still further. It was messy and frankly not very good owing to Amy's lack of fine muscular control but that was completely beside the point.

It took almost a minute, and a very loud hiccough from the smirking Jack Harkness before they finally broke apart.

"Now go," Amy told him via the computerised voice, her eyes misty as she took in the sharp contours of his familiar face as if it was the last time she'd see them. "Go do whatever it is you do."

"That's the plan, Pond." He pressed his lips briefly to her forehead before turning on his heel, his tweed coat leaving a cool draft in his wake. He flashed one more lopsided grin at the girl who owned both his hearts before closing the doors before her.

"So if you need someone else to snog, I'm always willing and able," Jack remarked as they set off down the embankment, following the flow of the stream, still with an infuriating smirk painted onto his face.

"Oh, shut it."

* * *

><p>Amy sat, immobile, eyes fixed on where the Doctor's face had once been. Gazing at the piece of wood separating her from the outside world – from him. He'd barely been gone five minutes and already she could feel a dreadful, sickening emptiness creep through her once again. Barely five minutes and she was missing him more than she could ever have imagined.<p>

_Is this your way of reminding me I'm in love with him? _She asked the world at large.

Instantly, she berated herself for being so down – that wasn't her style at all. She was Amy Pond, funny, happy, cheerful, relentlessly optimistic.

But it was becoming harder to remain optimistic when the universe seemed to be endlessly plotting against her. Taking her parents from her in still mysterious circumstances when she was just a small child. Giving her the promise of all of time and space at age seven, before snatching it away for twelve – or, more accurately, fourteen – years. Then being denied anything approaching a normal life, or even a normal death, for all eternity, and enforcing a break-up with the man she'd once hoped to marry. And worst of all, _those_ two weeks one April, almost seven years ago now...

_Yeah, but look what I've got in return. All of time and space, all of the perks that come with being a Time Lady – and him. Most of all, him. He makes it all worthwhile._

Or, at least, he would, when he returned. _When_ he returned. Not if. Because of course he'd return. He was the Doctor.

All she had to do was wait. Again. _Becoming very sick of waiting..._

She twitched her head as if trying to shake it before turning the wheelchair in a half circle and heading within. The shadow of a scowl found its way to her lips when she remembered that she wasn't _actually_ alone, and that she'd be spending probably several days being babysat by the last person she'd ever pick to perform that duty.

_Brilliant._

* * *

><p>"You know, we should really do this more often. You, me, forest hike," Jack commented.<p>

"Don't go scheming now, Captain Harkness."

"Wouldn't dream of it," he replied airily as they rounded another embankment, using hands and legs to pull themselves up a stony rock-face. "So where do you think we are?" Having felt that he'd teased the Time Lord enough, he decided to go into business mode – anything that could drain a vortex manipulator was worthy of his full attention.

"In a forest, obviously."

"Apart from that."

"Dunno. All I know is that there's something big and nasty that's not meant to be here, which is why the TARDIS's drained and why your manipulator doesn't work."

"Such as?"

"No idea. But big enough to play havoc with a TARDIS. Anything able to do that is big, scary big."

"And presumably protected," Jack pointed out, military instinct coming to the fore.

"Probably."

"So if we don't make it out?"

"Amy knows how to fly the TARDIS. So long as we can at least disable the effect, they'll escape," he told the former Time Agent matter-of-factly. "But I'd rather not let it come to that."

"Sounds like a plan."

They continued on beside the stream, meeting no one along the way. They heard nothing but the same twittering of birds, the same gentle tinkling of the water rushing over the pebble stones, saw only the same green-gold foliage of the forest trees, saw... _the same rocky embankment?_

He shuddered to a halt, dragged out of his own little world, noticing for the first time just how similar this portion of the stream looked to one they'd passed ten minutes before. Which had looked similar to one they'd passed ten minutes before that. Not similar, in fact.

Identical.

"Doctor," he called out behind the Time Lord, intuition of edge as a result from the repetition of setting, "is it just me, or have we been here before?"

"We have, haven't we?" The Doctor withdrew his sonic from his tweed jacket, twirling on the spot as he scanned his general surroundings. He cocked his wrist to read the surroundings. "Ah. That would explain it."

"Explain what?"

"This forest. It's artificial. These aren't even trees, I'm betting, they're oxygen machines." He leaped over to the nearest willow, running his sonic over it.

"Um – are you sure that's a good idea?"

"Good ideas are overrated," he replied, continuing to weave complex patterns in the air around the 'tree'. Eventually, a hissing of steam jets escaped from the midsection of the tree, and a section of bark swung open to reveal a soft blue light coming from within. Whatever it was, it was blatantly artificial. "Can you help me get this panel off?"

Together, they lifted the several-square-foot of bark-covered metal off the tree and onto the ground. Inside were several clear tubes, illuminated by that same aquamarine light they'd first witnessed upon its opening. There was a marking on the central column – a circle and a vertical line. The line started above the circle, running straight through its centre and extending past the bottom.

"Interesting," the Doctor murmured, running one tube along his fingers. He looked deeper into the tree, craning his neck within.

"'Earthsphere'," Jack read aloud, inspecting another tube in his hands, not noticing the creases forming on the Doctor's brow as the Time Lord scanned the interior with his sonic. "What the hell is that?"

Before he could pursue his question further, however, the unmistakable blaring of alarms filled the air, replacing the birdsong. The Doctor pulled his head out of the tree in a flash, turning to move away from it – only to find an invisible wall blocking his path. A gold-red glow surrounded both men – as sure a sign of a force field as either had ever seen.

The Doctor groaned. "So much for stealthy-stealthy."

* * *

><p>To Amy's delight, the return of feeling in both her arms and shoulders was no illusion, and they were at last beginning to respond to her commands again. Her face, too, was beginning to behave normally – she could smile, laugh, frown, pout as per usual again.<p>

However, the nerve endings were dull and her muscles highly atrophied from extended lack of usage, so whilst she she had full range of motion and could properly move her arms – very, very, _very_ slowly – she didn't have anything like the strength to actually do anything useful yet. Just trying to lift her sonic five inches above the armrest had been right at her limits. On past experience, however, she had expected this, and at the moment she was just bursting with joy that she was regaining this basic skill. She could feel strength returning with every flex, so she was confident that the issue would be solved in short order.

_Just walking and talking left, then_. And the talking was beginning to come on nicely as well, as she was finding out now in the library, practising reading some basic English and Gallifreyean literature out loud. It was a slow, painstaking process, managing barely a sentence a minute as she struggled to roll her tongue over anything multi-syllable. It took her several attempts to get through 'incredible_'_, the second syllable giving her immense difficulty. She was, however, persistent, so she got it out. Eventually.

Teaching herself to speak also provided a distraction from the immense _boredom_ creeping through her. But creep it did, and she eventually found herself drifting off into her own little world, staring blankly into the still waters of the pool whilst she daydreamed of the Doctor, and the alien world he was in the middle of exploring. An hour or two of this later, however, a different emotion had washed through her – a sudden, crippling fear, that an unexpected ill had befallen her lover.

_He's in trouble. I just know it._

Her intuition, always her most powerful driver, screamed at her to get out and try and assist him. Unfortunately, her state left her less than capable of doing so.

_Damn this bloody wheelchair. Can't go anywhere with it..._

Although...

_Now that I think about it, I've never actually tried going anywhere, have I? Thing looks pretty souped-up, should be able to handle some grass and rocks._

An idea, born from the reckless, impulsive centre within her, grew in her mind.

_Why not? It looked harmless enough based on what I saw, and besides, I can handle myself._

_Can you?_ A tiny, much more rational voice asked from within her. _Remember what you promised the Doctor? Weren't you supposed to be waiting for him?_

Unexpectedly, she found her resolve hardening, a cold, thick crust forming around it. Without his direct presence, the care in his sky-blue eyes there to nullify it, there was no chance of stopping her. _I'm a big girl. I don't need anyone to protect me. He needs help. I'm doing this for him, _she affirmed.

_Although I will need someone to carry food._

She smothered the dissenting voice and turned to roll her way out of the library.

* * *

><p>Katherine Olivia Broad was in a bad mood.<p>

A seriously, _seriously_ bad mood. Muttering-to-herself bad. Don't-get-on-my-wrong-side-or-I'll-flatten-your-nose bad. Too-distracted-to-notice-smoke-pouring-out-of-a-pot bad.

Which, unfortunately, was exactly what had happened as she drifted off, angrily chuntering about being trapped inside a bloody phone box when a whole different world – and a very enticing world at that – lay just beyond. But _no_, she had to stay here and goddamn babysit a twenty-two year old alien. So it was little surprise that she didn't notice the burning sauce until a pungent, acrid stench began to fill the air.

She leaped over to turn off the heat – but it was too late. There was no way anyone could eat this stuff. Cursing so viciously that it would make even the most foul-mouthed street urchin blush, she stomped to the pantry and hauled out the ingredients she'd need to make the sauce _again, _slamming pots onto the kitchen bench with an almighty clang.

The last thing she needed was some Scottish-accented snark.

"Nice work on the sauce, Broad," she heard an electronic voice call from behind her. "Always wondered what eating out of a fireplace would taste like."

_Oh, for..._

"Language, Broad," Amy rebuked from the wheelchair once Kate had shouted her little piece, a smirk planted across the Time Lady's face and her eyes sparkling. "Now put that stuff away, you won't need it."

A millimetre's raise of an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"Got an idea."

This time, both eyebrows shot into her thick blonde fringe. "And you're telling me this, why?"

"Need you on board. Out of necessity only, I assure you."

She crossed her arms, both suspicious – since when did Amy Pond ask her to join her with anything – and curious. "Alright. Shoot." Whatever she had in mind was definitely bound to be interesting.

It was.

"You sure that's a good idea?" She asked when Amy had finished, her eyebrows still buried deep in her hairline.

"Explain to me why it isn't."

Kate couldn't, as Amy had expected. But...

"The Doctor won't like this one bit."

"What he doesn't know can't hurt him."

"Wow, what a wonderful girlfriend you are."

"You're well aware that I'm not an ordinary girl." Kate was – she'd often told her as such many years back, although in far less kind a manner. Amy always had a sharp response at hand, though. "Nor human, for that matter. So you in or not?"

It was tempting, very, very tempting. Amy was pushing all the right buttons, prodding her restless hunger for what TARDIS life truly offered. But yet, yet...

"I don't know, Amy... the Doctor doesn't think this is a good idea. In fact he told you not to."

"What's got into you, Broad?" Amy demanded sharply. "You wanted to explore all of time and space, that's why you're here. That's all we're doing – exploring. So what's the problem? You chickening out?"

Just as they both knew it would, the goad shattered Kate's final layers of reluctance. "Fine. So what's the plan?"

"I need you to carry food, sleeping bags and stuff, enough for a few days. This wheelchair isn't big enough to carry all that much; besides, it probably won't be able to move if I overload it."

"Alright. Where can I find all this stuff?"

Amy's alien brain had already raced ahead, and she'd telepathically organised the necessary materials whilst making her way from the library to the kitchen. "I told the TARDIS to chuck it all in one room. Take a left, then third door on your right. Meet me in the console room once you've got it all."

* * *

><p>Twenty minutes later, Kate had collected a week's worth of food, a suspiciously alien-looking tent and two sleeping bags. She had absolutely no idea how this would fit into one large camping backpack and one small rucksack, but it did – she suspected some bigger-on-the-inside trickery at play. Evidently there was also some other kind of technological mystery at work, because what should have been about thirty kilograms' worth of weight turned out to be about three.<p>

She marched into the console room, finding Amy waiting in the wheelchair by the door. She was holding a cylindrical, metallic implement loosely in one hand, a blood-red crystal affixed to its end.

"What's that thing?"

"Sonic screwdriver."

"Right. Like your sonic phone?"

"Sort of."

"What does that thing even _do_, anyway?"

"It sonics stuff."

"Gee, thanks for the detailed explanation."

"You gonna be like this all day, Broad?"

"Don't see why not."

Amy groaned, which inevitably drew a smirk. "Hey, this was your idea in the first place."

"Don't remind me," Amy grumbled, as Kate tied the smaller rucksack around the back of the wheelchair. "So you've got everything? Food, tent, sleeping bag-?"

"Clothing, toothbrush, make-up, the works. Oh, and this." She pulled out a polished, obsidian black metal object. It's cylindrical barrel marked it unmistakably as one of Jack's electron blasters.

Amy's eyes widened slightly upon seeing the weapon. "Where the hell did you find that?" The Doctor had categorically banned Jack from bringing weapons aboard the TARDIS.

"Men, they think they're so good at hiding stuff, but really. Probably because they're no good at finding anything."

"Very true. You sure you can use it?"

"Aim and shoot, right? Can't be too hard." Katherine replied casually as she holstered the firearm (having also pinched one of Jack's spare weapon belts).

Amy, unlike the Doctor, had no moral objection to guns at all, having long since dealt with her misgivings about her actions aboard that spaceship last October. _But if Broad's going to bring one along, she has to be sure she knows what she's doing. _"You know what... what I meant," she said, using her own mouth, her own voice, slowly, slurred.

Kate's eyes widened to saucers. "You can talk again?"

"A lit.. a little," Amy told her, taking two attempts to get the word out. "So...?"

Kate hesitated, only just now considering the potential consequences of the gun's usage. "If I have to, I will."

Amy searched the blonde's face carefully. Now that she thought about it, the Doctor had a point – she could see a hell of a lot of herself in Broad's hazel eyes. That was how she knew she could convince her by saying the right things, pressing the right buttons. Katherine had always been a reckless and impulsive girl – just like her. At times the similarity was deeply disconcerting, but right now it counted as a good thing – she knew how the human girl would react to certain situations. Or, at least, she suspected. "You abso... solutely sure?"

"Again – if I have to, I will. Why, what about you?" Kate added, curiosity overriding her good sense.

"If you're asking if I've ever pulled the trigger on someone," Amy answered using the electronic speaker once again, her tone as icy and imposing as Antarctic icebergs, "The answer is yes, I have. At point blank range."

Kate could have sworn that her body temperature had halved at that point, so deep was the chill that ran down her spine. "Right. I won't ask about the details."

"Good plan. So we ready?"

"Yep. Let's roll."

Amy turned to face the police box doors. With a click, they opened of their own accord, revealing the pristine forest awaiting them. One after the other, the two girls from Leadworth moved outside into the sweet forest air of the unknown world.

* * *

><p><strong>To paraphase Moffat: Bad girls in the TARDIS. Or not in the TARDIS, to be precise.<strong>

**If you're wondering about Kate's middle name, there's no deeper meaning behind it – I chose it because I felt it runs off the tongue (as does Amelia Jessica Pond) – lovely vowel/consonant and syllable flow.**

**The shortening of her name has been planned from the moment I first envisaged the character - her original name was actually Kate.  
><strong>


	28. What Friends Are For

**A warning: the two subplots (Doctor/Jack vs Amy/Kate) that run throughout this and the next few chapters may be desynchronised in a big, big way. If it becomes an issue (neither confirm/deny), the date will refer to the Amy/Kate POV (since Amy is the primary major character in this fic, obvs). Hopefully it's not _too_ confusing, but it may get a wee bit messy if you don't pay close attention and read between the lines a little.**

**Really struggled with a title for this chapter. Went through three before settling on this – one was too simple, one _far_ too cryptic, one just a bit spoiler-y. The chapter itself went through about five very different drafts before it turned into what you see here. Hope you like it, should make up for the lack of action over the last few chapters. Oh, and a nasty cliffhanger ending, some key character work and one big question (amongst many other smaller questions), which I conveniently forget to ask. But you will.**

**Remember: reviews are writer food.**

* * *

><p><em>Sometimes you put walls up not to keep people out, but to see who cares enough to break them down.<br>~_ Anon

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 28. What Friends Are For: 22 March 2011<strong>

Few things are more unpleasant than being woken up by a phone call.

The man groaned as he jerked out of a pleasant dream, instinctively pulling the covers over him. The ringing of the telephone crashed into his ears once more. Beneath the blankets he could sense the first rays of sunlight creeping through the curtains.

_Ugh. Sunrise. Won't be able to get back to sleep. _The phone kept ringing.

"All right, all right," he grumbled to no one in particular. His hand reached out for the bedside cabinet, feeling blindly for the phone. He grabbed it mid-ring and pulled it to his ear. "Hello? Yes, it's me... so what if the alarms tripped, the forcefields should kick in automatically. Just capture them before they get cleaned out by the repticore..."

A brief pause, then the man shot upright, throwing the blankets off him. "Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? I thought they all died... well, yes, there was one survivor, I'm well aware... of course I want to meet him. I'll go there right now." He hung up, all traces of sleepiness gone, and flew to the dresser for the first outfit he could find.

There was a Time Lord to meet.

* * *

><p>The science of force-fields was a deep, complex and not particularly well understood. The intricate web of particles, kinetic barriers and little pockets of super-strong magnetic field made for a scientific nightmare, and as a result the main reason they were considered impermeable was because no one had the patience to try and figure out how to get through one.<p>

This meant that even the most basic methods of breaking down the average force-field were more or less unknown. This included methods so simple as a tailor-made sonic wavepacket. From a sonic screwdriver.

Within five seconds, the Doctor and Jack were off and running for their lives again.

"Can't we go anywhere without being arrested, shot at or chased by nasty aliens?" Jack asked, struggling to keep up with the Time Lord's gangly legs.

"Hey, we only got arrested. Or at least someone tried to arrest us. No shooting or being chased by angry aliens yet," the Doctor pointed out.

It was the wrong thing to say, as a four-inch long bony spike sailed right between the pair, embedding itself in a tree.

The Time Lord turned and found himself staring at a three pairs of narrow, blood-red eyes. The creatures they were facing were reptilian, almost snake like in nature, save for their angular, faces which were covered in sharp bone spurs and the presence of arms. They had claws instead of hands, and rather than standing on legs, they seemed to rear up on their bellies like oversized cobras.

"Ah. Right. That would be the 'shot at' and 'chased by angry aliens' boxes ticked too."

The creatures reared themselves up, ready to strike again, when without warning two of the reptilian aliens shrieked and collapsed to the ground, their crimson eyes glassy and lifeless. The third turned its head, searching for the source of its friends' killer but before it it could so much as do an about face, it too had fallen, pierced between the eyes by a foot long metal rod. A handsome, moustached man stepped out from behind a tree, wielding a crossbow.

"Got on the wrong side of the repticore, did you?" He laughed warmly as he replaced the crossbow behind his back, walking up to the pair and extending a hand. The Doctor took it in both of his, shaking it vigorously. "You don't need to introduce yourself – you're the Doctor."

"That's m'name. Can't seem to go anywhere without people knowing me these days, though."

"That's fame for you. And who's your friend here?"

"Captain Jack Harkness at your service, sir." He whipped out a full military salute, which the man half-heartedly returned.

"Greetings, Captain. I used to be a military man myself – long retired, though. My name is Stanley Blood. Welcome to Earthsphere."

* * *

><p>To Kate's immense surprise, Amy <em>did<em> turn out to be fairly mobile, darting deftly between rocky outcrops and thick patches of foliage. The wheelchair provided a surprising amount of torque, which mean that even reasonable steep inclines could be scaled with a little help from Katherine. During the afternoon, they – or rather Amy – had managed to work out that the forest was somehow artificial, but she wouldn't elaborate on how. Something about oxygen machines and a forest on a ship called the Byzantium.

_Bloody cryptic girl. _But then Amelia Pond had always been something of an enigma to everyone in her life.

Neither was particularly keen to head back to a dead time machine, safe though it may be. They hadn't signed up for safety. However, dusk was now beginning to fall, and Kate's body was beginning to object to the endeavour, both in her calves and her stomach. Predictably, Amy accused her of whining when she suggested they had dinner and camped up for the evening.

"How is pointing out that we haven't eaten for something like eight hours whining?"

"That's whining. Try not eating for two days because you're trapped in a hole being chased by great big bat people, then see how you like it. Even worse when you've got two of every organ to fill up."

"That just means you'll be even hungrier than I am."

"Am not," Amy shot back, although a rather inconveniently timed rumble in her stomach indicated otherwise. Katherine saw straight through it, her lip curling.

"Well, do what you like. I'm setting up the tent here." And she did so, plonking herself down on a rock and opening the backpack – which contained all the food. Mild blackmail was a tactic both girls were very familiar with and very partial to using.

That didn't make Amy any more pleased when it was used against her, but she recognised a dead end when she saw one. She turned her wheelchair into a position that indicated that she wasn't going anywhere – whilst swearing rather nastily at the blonde.

"Language, Pond."

"Didn't I ask you not to call me that?"

"You call me Broad. Fair's fair. Can that thing light a fire?" Kate had cleared a small space on the ground and piled up several stray pieces of wood in the centre. They ignited instantly under Amy's sonic.

"I always call you Broad," she replied vocally, pocketing the screwdriver once again. "Think I called you Ka-Ka-Katherine about four times."

"Kate, please. Or Kat. Either one."

"Name change, huh?"

"Just like yourself, although in much nicer circumstances."

"Hah. You have no i-idea."

"You're not gonna put me in hospital like you did the last time I asked, huh?"

"Don't tempt me." Amy paused, watching Kate fetch their 'dinner' from the depths of the backpack. "Actually, out of curiosity, what was that all about? That was the first civil word you'd gotten to me in years."

"You mean the first time I'd spoken to you full stop for years."

"Yeah, that."

Kate waited a moment before speaking again. _Time to face up to your past, Kate._ "Same reason I'm helping you now."

"What, because you wanted to go explo-explor-exploring?" A nasty stutter was creeping into Amy's speech again, but she ignored it.

"That's not what I meant, genius."

"Oi. Who's the one with the Time La-Lady brain here?"

"That doesn't work properly."

"Oh sh-sha-shut up."

"Never." Kate paused for a moment to hand Amy a sandwich roll, ending the little exchange before continuing. "The reason I helped you was simple. You know how I treated you when we first met."

"D-don't remind me."

"I'm sure you don't need one. I'm sorry, by the way, for that Mad Amelia Pond song I made up – but you know, kids are kids."

"Ma-making excuses a-already?"

"Of course not. It was me who did it, and it was horrible of me."

"W-why'd you do it then?" Amy replied sharply, using her newly reactivated arms to eat normally for the first time in three months – a ham, lettuce and cheese sandwich in a small bread roll. "Not that it per-perma-permen-permanently hurt me or anything, or made me es-esp-espa-especially sad, but I just don't g-get it. Why?"

"You were different. Red hair – although that was dumb, because you look effin' gorgeous now."

"Th-thank you," Amy replied stiffly.

"Welcome. But you know how young kids are with redheads. Fire alarm jokes and all that."

"At least it wasn't just m-me."

"That's not a good thing, Amy. But apart from that – you had a Scottish accent, which was weird. But more than that it was the fact that it was _you_. You know better than I do that you were just _different._ You were smarter than all of us by miles, except for Rory, and you knew it too. More than a little cocky, I might add."

Amy would have argued, but economy of speech was probably a good idea right now – especially since she was well aware that Kate was completely correct. Kate took her silence as assent. "Plus," she continued, "you didn't ever bother to be actively friendly with anyone except Rory."

"Be-because he was the only one who be-believed me."

"And then there's that. That, most of all."

"Well, I was right, was-wasn't I? He ca-came back for me." _Even after... after I'd given up._

"And don't I know it. If you're trying to make me feel a right fool, congratulations, you've succeeded."

"N-none of this exp-ple-plains why you... you walked up to me to ask me wa-where I'd been for ta-two weeks when I was fif-fifteen." Amy was now seriously struggling to get through her sentences again, but she had resolved to use her own voice from now on. She pressed on, stutter or no.

"Why'd you think?"

"Won't know unless you t-tell me. You're acting p-pretty bla... bloody f-fr-friendly for someone who spent a good f-few years ta-teasing me mer-mersa-merci-"

"Mercilessly?"

"That."

"That's the point. I was already starting to feel pretty stupid over the whole thing – that's what happens when you grow up – but when you came back, and you were like _that..._ it just didn't seem like you at all."

"That's be-because I wasn't. Why do you think I ch-changed my name?"

"I don't think I want to know."

Amy paused, realising just how much she'd been inadvertently opened up. "So y-you just w-want to b-be forgiven."

"Don't we all?"

Amy remained silent. Kate took this as signal that this branch of conversation was over. _Think that's the first civil one I've ever had with her that's even slightly personal in nature. Maybe she isn't such a hard-case after all._

"So where do you think he is? We've been looking the whole day, we've found no sign of them."

"Yeah, that's the p-problem."

"I thought you could find him just by concentrating."

"T-too much noise." Something was intefering quite badly with Amy's psychic abilities. This unnerved her deeply. She had no idea why this was happening, and knew that there was only one person who could explain. This made it an even higher priority that she found him, not least because it meant her thoughts were necessarily internalised – and introspection was something she tried very hard to avoid. Disintegrating internal barriers aside, there were plenty of other dark corners in her hearts she preferred not to encounter.

"Couldn't you just ask?"

Unexpectedly, Amy burst into laughter. "You're ra-really new to this, aren't you? You think the da-Doctor would ever give a st-straight answer to that qua-question? Besides which, we're not actu-actually meant to b-be here."

The eruption of alarms all around them at that moment underlined the statement.

* * *

><p>Their trip was an odd one – first a brief trek to a forest path (the Doctor pointedly neglected to answer Jack's question as to how they'd manage to miss it), then a horse ride to the edge of the forest, then a roughly 40th-century atmospheric shuttle trip, then horse again. Jack had been very nervous about the shuttle trip, due to the lack of wings, engines, jets or any other obvious form of propulsion, but it flew smoothly enough.<p>

"You lot skip cars or something?" the Doctor asked as they trotted down a narrow street. It was remarkably clean, the polished cobblestone almost gleaming in the mid-afternoon sun.

"Too dirty," Stanley answered. "We definitely have the technology, of course, but we don't need them. For any sort of longer-distance travel, there's always the shuttles, which are free."

"Fair enough." He could certainly see the point – he could see children playing a makeshift form of cricket on the street, their innocent laughter colouring the air. That certainly wouldn't have been possible with great big metal vehicles screeching this way and that. "Am I correct in saying that the shuttle is telepathically controlled?"

"Everything on Earthsphere is telepathically operated. You don't even flick a switch on your food blender, you just think it and out comes a milkshake."

The Doctor was impressed. "Clever. But that doesn't answer my question."

"Or perhaps you didn't quite understand the answer. There's no electricity or petrol on Earthsphere. Psychic energy is our power source. Your minds are what powered the shuttle. We're here because you want us to be. I must say, you must have an exceptionally powerful mind to fly it so easily for the first time, but that's what I'd expect from a Category 6 telepath."

"More of this knowledge about Time Lords – where did you learn all this stuff?"

"Your race may not exist any more, but it left its traces. That was my original calling, learning about the history of the Time War as a young up-and-coming naval officer growing up on a very long way from here. Learning about that was what drove me to originally envisage Earthsphere, as a shelter from what horrors time and space could hold. In some ways you're the inspiration for this place."

The Doctor was doubly impressed now. "You _built_ this place? This, well, paradise?"

"It's not complete. It's never complete. It can always get better."

"You've definitely got the right attitude."

"That's the only reason this place exists. It was my life's dream to build this place, a place where you could come and live the life you _wanted_ to live, not the life you were forced to live. It took me many, many years, but you're seeing it at its best."

"How'd you do it?"

"Long story."

"Even better, love a good long story." Behind him, Jack silently disagreed, but the Doctor was in one of his moods, a twinkle in the eye reminiscent of an eager school-child, so he chose to let him be.

"I'll give you the short version," Stanley told him, chuckling. "First we had to find a stable star with a nice, safe habitable zone. Then we had to build the world from scratch. That took a long, long time, the best part of ten years. Then we had to create a working temporal-psychic equalisation field to get all the telepathic controls operating, tricky since humans obviously aren't naturally telepathic. That took a while as well. But we got there in the end."

The Doctor looked around at the people milling about, going on their day-to-day business. Their eyes were bright, their faces vibrant. He seemed to have created that rarest of things – a pocket of the universe free from pain, suffering and hurt. Except for one thing...

"The repticore. How did they get here?"

The man's face clouded. "No one knows. They were introduced a long time ago, and they're the reason that the forest you were in is closed. It's just about the only law we have – no one goes in the forest, no one interacts with the repticore."

"It's a shame – it's a quite beautiful forest."

"It is, but I'm afraid it's off-limits now."

"That'll be a problem, because my TARDIS is kind of stuck in it, and it can't move."

Stanley turned to him, surprised. "Really? You still have one of those?"

"The one and only. But it's drained, and my bet is that it's your temporal-psychic equaliser field that's doing it."

"Ah. Sorry. We're not exactly experts at this, we learn on the fly. If you could help us fix it, that would be swell."

"It's the least I can do. I can help you get rid of the repticore, too."

Stanley sighed. "They're too well-established. I appreciate the offer, but I think that would be a bridge too far."

The Doctor grinned. "There's no such thing for me."

* * *

><p>Kate Broad was a creature of instinct and intuition.<p>

It had been instinct that told her that it would be a good idea to try and earn Amy's forgiveness. Intuition that told her Rory needed her help to recover from the break-up. Instinct that told her to follow Amy on her little plan to find her Time Lord counterpart.

So when alarms filled the air and a red glow descended over them, it was little surprise she moved completely on instinct, her hand moving straight for her hip and the gun she had hidden under her coat. Amy moved on instinct as well, pulling out her sonic in a graceful, flowing arc and disabling the forcefield as quickly and effortlessly as she had disabled the rifles of three unnamed men who had jumped her little group of soldiers many months ago.

Before either girl had even fully processed what had happened, both were fully alert, scanning their surroundings hawk-like, blaster and sonic in hand.

"What the hell was that?" Katherine's voice was quick, high, edgy, adrenaline beginning to surge through her body.

"No clue. We need to m-move. _Now._"

"Right." She looked at the Time Lady, whose eyes had taken a dangerous, star-bright dazzle but was otherwise she was a picture of vulnerability. The girl made an executive decision.

"Hey – _hey! What the hell do you th-think you're doing?"_ The Time Lady yelled indignantly, hammering on Kate's chest with her fists as the Kate picked her off the wheelchair. She lifted Amy in both arms, one hand still gripping the electron blaster, her eyes darting left and right.

"Sorry, Amy. For your good." She began to back into the forest.

They barely managed to make ten metres than several hissing noises met them, dark-brown creatures slithering out of the forest around them. In the rapidly vanishing daylight, Kate could just make out their lizard-like features, almost snake-like. The evil, crimson glint in their eyes forewarned their intentions as they reared. Kate began searching her surroundings, her eyes roving for cover.

"More intruders," one said, its distorted, menacing hiss carrying over the still evening air. The creatures reared upwards, reaching about seven feet in height.

Neither girl needed an explanation of what their actions entailed. Kate spotted a small gap between several boulders, just large enough to hold two people. She dived for it, taking Amy with her, crashing into the safety of the rocky hole as the first knife-like spines sailed over them.

"You _will_ regret that," Amy snarled, her breathing shallow, her chest having slammed at a quite horrible angle into a jagged-edged rock. A sharp, stabbing pain in her chest informed her that several of her ribs had almost certainly cracked, if not snapped entirely. She clutched at her side with one hand as her chest rose up and down, the other holding the spiral-bound diary that she'd managed to retrieve just in the nick of time as Kate hefted her in her arms.

"Yeah, later. Right now we're being attacked by great big lizards, so there's no time to be gentle," Kate snapped, having zero time for the Time Lady's crap at this present juncture. She poked her head above the rock, briefly scanned her surroundings and fired off an automatic burst with her blaster in a wide arc. A pair of screams told her two of the many shots were aimed true. _Hah. All that clay pigeon shooting came in handy._

More deadly spikes sailed rang out over them. They were closing in. _God, what is it with us and getting shot at?_

Amy closed her eyes, concentrating against the pain. She couldn't sense anything, or launch an attack – there was some sort of psychic mist clouding her senses, and she was finding it difficult to perceive anything beyond the girl next to her. Katherine raised her arm and fired another burst blind, missing by about ten metres. Even having felled two of them, there was no way they could make it out alive.

Unless...

"Ka... Kate," she said in a low, ragged breaths, every syllable a knife to her ribs. "Take... this." She lifted her hand, prodding the girl in the back with her sonic screwdriver. Kate turned, her hazel eyes round as she stared at the device.

"What?"

"Take it. It... it..." Amy coughed, her back reflexively arching as excruciating pain burst through her torso. _Hurts too much to talk... fine. Last resort._ Using her other hand, she reached up for the girl, her trembling fingers grasping Kate's loose hand. She closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to push through the bizarre block that surrounded her, barging her way into the girl's mind.

_**Kate, **_she began once she was sure a connection had been established. **_Take it and use it. Just point and think. Do it now. Right now_**.

Kate nodded, too in-the-moment to question why Amy's voice had suddenly appeared inside her head. She grabbed the screwdriver and unfurled her full height, twirling like a ballerina as she activated the sonic, drawing agonised screams from the aliens as their senses were suddenly filled with the sound of fingernails scraping over a blackboard. She deactivated the sonic and fired another arc of electron plasma. She felt an odd pushing sensation in her belly, heard an odd ripping sound, but it barely even registered as she spun, cutting down the assailants. The six aliens went down without another sound, but a distant shriek indicated that they weren't the last.

Amy's palm closed around her exposed ankle. _**Is that all of them?**_

"Yeah, but there's more coming," Kate replied breathlessly, her heart racing from pure adrenaline rush. _Did I seriously just do that?_

_**Alright. Give me the gun.**_

"What?" Kate's eyes snapped down to the Time Lady, whose breathing was still heavily laboured and her eyes firmly shut as she tried to block out the pain in her chest. "Why?"

_**I'll hold the rest off for you, give you a distraction, while you get back to the TARDIS. When he returns, tell the Doctor I'm sorry and I love him. Tell Rory as well. Now give me the gun.**_

Kate looked at the girl whom she'd teased so relentlessly once upon a time. The girl who now possessed one of the most powerful minds in the history of the universe, contained within a beautiful but battered, broken body. One look and her decision was made.

"No."

_**What? **_Somehow, Amy managed to sound offended that Katherine had the gumption to disobey. **_Do you want to get killed too? Don't be stupid. Give me that goddamn gun and get your stupid bloody face out of here. _**

"No, I don't think so." Ignoring any further furious protestations and cries of pain, she picked up the Time Lady bodily using the extra strength adrenaline had bequeathed her, and ran. Their little exploratory trip was over.

* * *

><p><em>Pain is fast becoming her companion.<em>

_Well, not her companion. But an extremely close acquaintance._

_And now it fills her chest, scythes through her with every step the girl takes._

_She is in the girl's arms, her mind drifting as she blocks out the pain searing through her chest._

_Why is the girl doing this? Why had she risked her own life to save hers, not once but twice? What did she hope to gain out of it?_

_At once, hot, thick shame washes through her._

_This is why she has so few true friends. So utterly self-driven, so internalised is she that she doesn't even know the simple act of unconditional aid when she sees it. Someone helping just because they can, because they feel they should. After all, that's what friends are for, even if neither truly know it yet._

_As the girl continues to run, the light in her eyes beginning to flicker and her face paling as her strength begins to give out, she realises that she has found a new one today._

_A friend._

* * *

><p>"Doctor?"<p>

"Yes! Sorry, what?" The Doctor returned to reality, startled out of his daydream by the voice of Jack Harkness next to him. Well, daydream wasn't quite correct – night had fallen several hours ago.

They had arrived at Stanley's residence just before sunset, a simple but surprisingly luxurious abode on a hilltop overlooking a sprawling city. Jack shook his head. "Was just asking about Stanley. What do you think of him?"

"Seems nice enough. It's not every day you meet someone who knows Time Lord history." As a semi-professional military historian, Stanley displayed an impressive knowledge of the various campaigns of the Last Great Time War, including the Battle of the Gates Of Elysium, the Fall of Arcadia and of course the use of the Moment. Most importantly, he seemed to know the Doctor's personal involvement in all of these campaigns, and did not judge him for it.

_One reluctant warrior to another._

Stanley hadn't elaborated on just what had made him leave the military, but the Doctor could see it in his eyes – the most difficult acts to live with were the ones you were forced to do.

Jack didn't look entirely convinced. "Hm, OK. He seems a bit... off to me, but alright. So what's our plan?"

"It's fairly simple. First we need to recalibrate the equaliser, then we need to get rid of those repticore. Or the other way round. Either will do."

"Why can't we just leave the repticore alone?" Jack was no coward, but had little intention of tussling with the evil-eyed reptiles again.

The Doctor didn't answer directly, instead pointing out the window. "You see that horizon, Jack?"

"Yeah."

"That isn't actually a horizon at all. It's just the point at which light becomes too scattered for us to see. This world doesn't curve downwards, it curves upwards. Like a balloon, except we're on the inside, with the star in the middle."

"Wait, like a Dyson sphere?" Jack had heard of the fantastic, almost mythological constructions but had never actually _seen_ one – to build one was considered by many to be the pinnacle of civilization.

"Like that."

"So why does the sun rise and set normally?"

"That's where it gets really clever – the atmospheric shell is coated with a special material with adaptive refractive...ness. So the light is bent so it looks like the sun is rising and setting... just like it would on Earth."

Jack blinked. "Seriously?"

"Seriously. Genius, eh?"

Jack breathed, gazing at the dark horizon. It was hard to tell in the night-time, but he thought the ground did seem to stretch on for an unusually long distance before merging with the blackness above. "How could one person do this?"

"No idea, but it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And to make everything telepathically powered..." He chuckled. "Even I would've struggled to do that." He thinned his lips, a sombre glint in his eye. "It's a rare thing Stanley has going here. Very, very rare. Pristine. It needs to be protected."

Jack nodded. "So that's why we're taking on the repticore?"

"Exactly why, although 'taking on' isn't what I have in mind. They can be reasoned with, you know."

"And Amy? She'll not be happy about hearing this."

The Doctor's mind flitted back the daydream – Kate was in the forest, running with Amy in her arms from some unknown, deadly terror... he shook his head.

"What she doesn't know can't hurt her."

"What a wonderful boyfriend you are."

"Thank you. I try."

He returned to his silent vigil at the window, watching the twinkling of the 'stars' projected onto the atmospheric shell above.

_Just a silly daydream. That's all._

* * *

><p>Kate had never run so hard in her life. Fuelled by pure adrenaline, she sprinted away from the campsite. Amy was still lying mostly immobile in her arms, and her eyes darted left and right as she searched for any signs of more deadly aliens.<p>

"Sorry about breaking your ribs. I'll have a look at them when we get back to the TARDIS," she murmured after she'd run full-tilt for about ten minutes. Amy's weight slowed her considerably, and unburdened she would have reached the TARDIS and safety by now but she suspected she was barely halfway. She had begun to feel slightly light headed, and the strength in her arms was dissipating. She was beginning to feel very aware of just how much Amy weighed. _All those extra organs... _she snapped her mind out of it. This was not the time to be distracted.

"Mmm," Amy mumbled between pressed lips. The pain in her chest was starting to dull as her biological self-repair kicked into gear, but she still felt like someone was stabbing her in a heart every time she bounced upon and down in time with Kate's steps. _Kate'll help with _that. The girl had taken a nursing internship at the same hospital as Rory worked at several years before, a move which Amy had been deeply suspicious of at the time.

They entered a clearing in the forest. Kate was now feeling very odd indeed, her footsteps heavy and somewhat uneven. She shook her head did her best to clear the mist from her eyes... _gotta focus. Get her back. Doctor'll kill me if I don't. Ugh. How much further is – what was that?_

She shuddered to a halt, the sudden deceleration provoking another inadvertent moan from Amy's throat. There it was again – a rustling noise ahead of her.

"Who's that? Who's there?" She called out in a strangely wavering voice. _Christ, what is happening to me?_ She decided to give herself a look when they got back to the TARDIS as well. If they got there, of course.

There was no response. She placed Amy against a tree and fired a burst of electron plasma into the trees at what she figured was just above head height. _"_Hear that? I'm armed, and so very dangerous, so you better speak up and tell us who you are."

This time there was a response.

"You know," came a rough, gruff male voice, "it's really quite rude to greet someone by shooting at them."

She relaxed her iron grip on the blaster, but she didn't lower it. "Yeah, well, I'm not in an ask-questions-first-shoot-later mood," she shot back.

"Funny, could have sworn you asked before you fired," came the amused reply. Another rustling in the trees and a dark-eyed man in military greens emerged, his arms raised in an open, harmless gesture. He had a wry smile on his face as he stepped into a clearing, which rapidly faded as he caught sight of the two girls. Kate lowered the gun at last, her heart finally beginning to slow. She felt very light-headed now.

"Do you need a medic? You look hurt."

"That'd be great. My friend here is paralysed and has a few broken ribs."

"I can get help for that as well, but I was talking about _you, _personally."

"What?" Kate looked down for the first time, and saw that beneath her night-black coat, the lower part of her cream shirt was a bright crimson. She moved her hand to her lower abdomen, feeling a four-inch long spine embedded in her body, her fingers sticky with blood.

She'd been hit and she hadn't even noticed.

The adrenaline rush had been the perfect anaesthetic for the wound whilst she'd fought and ran, but now the pain was returning – with a vengeance. At least she knew why she felt light-headed now.

"Aw, crap." Her legs buckled and her vision blackened.

Her last memory was Amy Pond screaming her name as the darkness took her.

* * *

><p><em>Fear. Anguish. Pain. Physical and mental. Guilt.<em>

_Unfathomable guilt._

_The man loads the pale, bloodied body into the atmospheric shuttle before coming back for her._

"_Can you talk?" He asks business-like but still with an undertone of sympathy as he helps her inside._

"_Y-yes," She gasps, gritting her teeth against the pain in her ribs. "This isn't per-permanent, don't worry about m-me. Worry about her." _

"_Who is she?"_

"_My f-friend. She saved m-my life. Twice."_

_And now it looks like her friend might pay with her own._


	29. All Night In The Garden

**Sorry sorry sorry about the delay. I don't know _why_ this turned out so tough to write – plot and characterisation difficulties as well as lots and lots of external distractions. Mea culpa.**

**So this one is basically character-focussed. Slow burners are the best burners and all.**

**Shout if there's weird typos and the like, it's coming up to 3am here so there'll probably be stuff I miss. Oh, and timelordt, check your twitter.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 29. All Night In The Garden: 22 – 26 March 2011<strong>

The console room of the TARDIS was silent. Bereft of its usual sprightly inhabitants, the time machine was currently indulging in some self-maintenance, using the recently-returned power that the Doctor's whatever-he-had-done-overnight had given Her.

However, despite being a twelve-dimensional personality matrix that existed across all of time and space simultaneously and therefore not exactly prone to seeing things "the normal way", She couldn't help but miss them, just like She did every time he left with his latest stray. Of course She understood what they were, what they meant to him, and She quite "liked" some of them, in Her strange time-machine way.

But now, for the first time in years uncounted, it was different. There wasn't just one of them. There was _two_.

It excited Her, in a way that She hadn't thought was possible except in the wildest possibilities. But Time, ever-mysterious, had chosen this path and She would not question it. And when She looked into the orangey-girl's soul, She saw what she was, she had all the potential that gave Her such hope in the darkness.

But She, more powerful than any Time Lord could ever imagine, also saw into the deepest pockets of the girl's brain, and saw that there was night to match the day.

Just like him. The girl didn't want pity, She knew that. But pity her She did. And She knew the girl would need to be protected. She knew what her mind was on the verge of spiralling out of control. With Her last vestiges of power as energy drained out of her reserves, She had extended her own psychic shield around the girl's mind, inhibiting her psychic abilities down to the level of an ordinary Time Lord. She could have done this months ago to prevent the overload, but some things were just supposed to happen. Now, though, time was very much in flux, and She had more leeway to intervene a bit more. It was hardly a permanent solution, but it would do for now.

But She could not control. Not directly. Her place was to observe – and every now and then land the Doctor somewhere he didn't really intend – not to interfere. Most frightening of all was the simple fact that She, omniscient time machine, didn't know what was going to happen.

No one did.

* * *

><p>Amy had already chewed through all the fingernails on one hand and was starting on the other when a firm, calloused hand, gripped her wrist. Stress was written into every pore of her round face, beads of sweat forming on her forehead.<p>

"Easy now," the man who had found them told her gently. "You won't have any nails at that rate."

She held her once-enemy's limp hand in hers. It was icy cold. Felt her pulse. It was rapid and weak... _so weak..._

The last few minutes had been a blur. Out of nowhere, a shuttle, about twenty metres long, had landed in the clearing. The man, whose name Amy had learnt was Iverson, helped them aboard, laying Kate in a clean, white bed. After finding Amy a new wheelchair – she obstinately refused to lie down – he had summoned several medics who immediately set to work removing the thin repticore spine and tending to Kate's wound. The spine had been laced with an anti-clotting compound which still complicated matters further. She was sickly-pale and on the verge of potentially fatal shock, having already lost far too much blood in the rush to escape.

Amy just watched, biting her fingernails, her own pain irrelevant (and dulling). Once he'd done, she kept watching, her mind a chaotic sea of emotions.

"So what's your name?" Iverson asked, washing his hands in a nearby sink as the medics continued to try and stem the bleeding. He had the astonishing calm that only came with someone who had seen and done this many, many times before.

"Amy Pond."

"And your friend?"

"Kate B-Broad."

"She said you had a few broken ribs. I'll take a look if you want."

Amy shook her head. "Nah. These are a-al-already healing."

He smiled, mistaking her response for an attempt to keep a strong front for her friend. "Broken bones don't fix themselves, Miss Pond."

"Mi-mine do. I'm n-not human," she said bluntly. _Might as well get it out of the way now. _

"You look human."

"I know. Time Lord, or T-time Lady, rather. We c-came first."

His eyes widened to saucers upon hearing the information. "Really? Never thought I'd see the day."

"You k-know about us?"

"My brother used to be obsessed with Time Lord history." He sighed, a melancholy expulsion of breath laced with old, withering memories. "I never found it too interesting myself. But I thought they all died out."

"Almost. Just m-me and the D-Doctor now. So wi-will Kate be oh-okay?"

"I think so. She's already lost a lot of blood but we've got the very best here and she strikes me as a particularly tough nut. I'd back her in this race."

"What-whatever you c-can do."

Iverson looked at the redhead sympathetically, who had started biting her nails again. "I can get you a drug for the paralysis, if you like. Our medical technology really is first rate."

"Yo-you me-mean a a-cure?"

"Yes. So long as your nervous system is physically intact, it should be able to get you at least some movement back."

"P-please. I'm si-sick of no-not being ab-able to w-walk. And t-this bl-bloody st-stut-tutter."

"I'll get it to you once we're at the hospital."

They fell silent, resuming their vigil over the human girl's life.

* * *

><p><em>Pain. Agony unending, impossible, unbearable.<em>

_It's too much. She can't do it. It has to stop. Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop..._

_And it's over. Gone. Vanished._

_The girl opens her eyes, chest heaving, her hands over her temples. A dark-eyed but kind-faced man kneels before her, placing a concerned hand on her shoulder._

"_Are you alright? This drug was designed for humans, I don't know what side-effects there will be..."_

_She opens her mouth. For the first time in months, she speaks freely, fully, with her own voice, free of stutter. A clear, Scottish-accented voice echoes around the small hospital room._

"_Yeah, I'm fine, thanks. Don't worry about me."_

* * *

><p>The Doctor was up and dressed before he was fully aware he was actually awake.<p>

The doubts and misgivings of yesterday had vanished. There was no doubt any more about what had happened. And he was not happy.

_Why does she do it? Why did she do it? And why did SHE let her out?_

He knew the answer, though, already lay within himself. Completely unknown world, strange temporal and psychic anomalies from the equaliser field, deadly and dangerous aliens that weren't supposed to be there... and he was asking her to stay at home whilst he went out and did whatever?

_I mean... really._

It was strange – since when was he so protective? This wasn't the first time he'd tried to keep Amy away from danger... without success. This still-newish version of him seemed to have taken the experiences of his previous life to hand and heart, so he guessed it came from there.

Even so, given that he'd spent the best part of three months consumed by worry and guilt over the consequences of the mistake _he'd_ made, he felt he was allowed – even obligated – to be a little protective.

But clearly, and predictably, she'd objected to this arrangement to the point where she'd taken matters into her own hands, because the latest shared-perspective vision he'd just had sure as hell didn't place her in the TARDIS. The 'daydreams' of yesterday definitely weren't.

He tried to piece together the information he'd gleaned from the several visions he'd had.

_Amy and Kate in the forest, running from something – probably repticore. Definitely repticore. Amy can't walk and she's abandoned the wheelchair, so Kate carries her. Kate's injured and goes into shock. Someone rescues them in a shuttle. Amy gets some drugs and regains the ability to talk normally in some hospital – but where? And who is she with? And is Kate safe?_

At least she was safe for now, but that didn't stop him feeling more than a little irritated – not least because he couldn't say the same about the human girl, though intuition told him she'd pull through. He hadn't told her to stay at home because he felt like it, he was genuinely, deeply concerned about her welfare. Far more so than his own... and more to the point, more than she cared about hers. Self-preservation instincts didn't seem particularly strong in the Time Lord race nowadays – granted, the sample size of two wasn't great.

But that was enough of that. _There'll be time to tell her and the TARDIS off later. Right now, more important questions to be asked – where she is, who she's with, how they found her, why Stanley didn't know – or didn't tell me._

Something was very, very amiss here and it wasn't just his other half gallivanting about on her own. He had to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.

His unparalleled intellect began to grind into gear as the first vestiges of a plan formed in his mind.

_I'm coming for you, Amelia Pond._

* * *

><p>Soft, gentle white light. A feather-light bed. A whirring of a heartbeat monitor.<p>

_In a hospital. I'm in a hospital._

Kate opened her eyes, her eyelids heavy from wearing-off anaesthetic. A quick appraisal of her surroundings confirmed that her initial guess had been correct, and she was indeed in a cream-white hospital room with a surprisingly low ceiling.

As her vision cleared, she noticed a patch of dark crimson coming into focus in mid-air. She squinted, trying to make out its form. At last, she managed to make out what was on the end of her bed... or, rather, who.

"Amy?" Her voice was still a little weak, but it hadn't lost its crisp verve.

"Evening, sleepyhead. You've been out close to a day. Lazy bugger," Her thick, flaming hair was clasped on one side, framing the gentle lines of her face. She had a wry smirk on her face, and an enigmatic, warm light filled her eyes. A warmth Kate had never, ever seen directed her way before.

"You're not in your wheelchair."

"Yeah, thanks to you, kinda dragging me away from it. No matter now, though, got my voice back and the crutches are great."

"Crutches? What do you mean?"

"They gave me some sort of drug to fix my nervous system. Didn't really work – it's meant for humans, not Time Ladies - so I still can't really work my legs, but at least I can talk normally again. Reckon I should be walking within a week or two as well. And crutches beat wheelchairs by a country mile." She decided not to mention that the drug had triggered no fewer than four brutal psychic migraines back-to-back. It was worth it to be able to talk again, she judged.

"I can imagine," Kate chuckled. "So what happened to me?"

"Those lizard folks that attacked us – repticore – they must have hit you with one of their spine thingies while you were taking them out. I don't know how you didn't notice. Moron." Complete change of heart or not, Amy wouldn't miss an opportunity to fling insults her way. If only because she knew Kate would give as good as she got.

"Says the girl who thought it would be a brilliant idea to play the hero while I ran off. How are your ribs, by the way?"

"They're fine, mostly healed already. And don't apologise," Amy warned, noticing the girl opening her mouth. "If it hadn't been for you diving for that little hole, I'd be done for. Or regenerating, which is just as bad."

"Yeah, well, call us even."

"Then you got me away from those things despite bleeding to death."

"Forget it."

"Now, Kate-"

"Seriously, forget it. It's enough that you didn't just throw me out of the TARDIS straight away. Must've seemed kinda unfair for you, given how you had to wait fourteen years and me about two months."

"I was tempted for sure," Amy laughed. "And the Doctor and I were arguing about it before we ended up here. But I reckon you've earned your stripes now."

"Out of interest, how close was I? To, you know..." _Wow, don't think I've ever asked such an awkwardly morbid question in my life._

Amy's face clouded. "Let's not talk about that."

_That close, huh?_ She decided not to push the matter further – on balance, she decided didn't _really_ want to know how close she had come to losing her life."So any news on the Doctor?

"I've asked Iverson, he doesn't know. And I don't know either. I don't like that, not one bit. Something seriously weird is going on around here."

"You reckon it's related? The Doctor getting himself into trouble and the TARDIS going kaput?"

"Maybe. That's not what worries me, though."

"Maybe you are a decent girlfriend after all. Don't beat yourself up about him, though. He'll be fine – he's a Time Lord."

Amy looked away. "It's just a name. We're not gods or anything."

"Don't spread that around, though."

Amy had to laugh at that. "Noted."

"So where are we?"

"Hospital, dunno where. Ask Iverson."

"Iverson?"

"The bloke who picked us up. Nice guy."

"Ah, right."

They sat in silence for a while before Amy finally found the question she'd been waiting to ask for over a day.

"How was Rory, by the way? Back in Leadworth."

"Cut up. Badly. It killed him, losing you. But," she added, noticing the pain that had flickered across Amy's face. "He got better. By the time you came to pick us up, I'd say he'd more or less moved on."

"Yeah, I figured. And you were there the whole time?"

"Yeah."

"You helped him? Whatever he needed, you were there for him?"

"Yes."

Amy gazed at her for a few seconds, her face unreadable, giving away nothing of her thoughts or emotions. "I have to go talk to Iverson about finding the Doctor." She stood, levering herself upright on the metal crutches and turning to leave. "Oh, and Broad?"

"Yeah, Pond?"

"Thanks for saving me."

* * *

><p>Jack Harkness liked his sleep.<p>

The empty oblivion of unconsciousness provided a perfect, welcoming escape from the near-bottomless well of memories that darkened his milky-blue eyes.

So he did _not _appreciate his sleep being interrupted. Certainly not in an abrupt, rude manner. And certainly not by a hyperactive bow-tie wearing alien.

"Harkness! Up, rise, shine! New day, big day, big things to see, big things to do!"

_Day? Really? _He opened his eyesever so slightly, finding nothing but nighttime darkness – only the slightest hint of light before sunrise crept through the open window.

The Doctor soniced the mattress which promptly heaved upwards, unceremoniously dumping the dazed and disoriented immortal on the floor.

"Whasthematter?" Jack mumbled, feeling half-blind for the non-existent blanket. The Doctor reached down and hauled him upright, brushing the crumples out of his greatcoat as he did so. "Wuzzgoingon?"

"Nothing. Now, I need you to find the superluminal couplings for me. They'll be in the drawing room past the sauna."

"On the TARDIS?" Jack was at least now managing to separate his words, although his voice was still slurred.

"Where else?"

"But," Jack replied groggily, his mind grinding ever-so-slowly into gear. "How am I meant to get back there? We're not _in_ the TARDIS, in case you hadn't remembered."

"Fixed the equaliser while you were asleep. Your manipulator should work fine now. Just need to sonic it and you'll be off." And he did so, grasping Jack's wrist and twirling his screwdriver around the manipulator with a familiar buzz. "Pip pip!"

And just like that, he was gone, vanishing into the Time Vortex in a burst of electricity and smoke.

* * *

><p>There was, mercifully, very little lasting damage from the spine. Kate was off the intravenous drip the next day and up and about the day after that. She was still more than a little weak, but like Amy she refused to be cowed by circumstance. They shared the same room – this being a working hospital and hence busy, they were assigned their own ward. Both girls naturally asked if they could have <em>private<em> rooms, but none were available.

Thankfully, Amy turned out to be a good if quite bizarre friend. She was, in her own way, kind (if maintaining a healthy dose of Scottish snark) and generous. Good thing too, because Kate hadn't quite tuned in on all of Amy's idiosyncrasies on her brief sojourn on the TARDIS some months before.

She quickly found out that Amy, like the Doctor, had a borderline obsession with her sonic screwdriver, tinkering with it, twirling it around, using it on random things like the door, the machines, the lights and Kate's hair, amongst others. This tested her patience. Severely.

Even worse was the fact that despite sharing the same room, Kate honestly couldn't remember a single moment when she had seen the Time Lady sleeping or even resting. This wasn't due to lethargy – although she did need a few extra winks to recuperate – this was simply due to the fact that Amy just didn't seem to sleep.

"Don't you _ever_ go to bed?" She groaned as she heard some scraping sound from somewhere else in the room, presumably fabricating yet another completely useless alien gadget. "It's effin' three in the morning!"

Amy glanced sideways sheepishly. "Oh – my bad. Didn't realise you were still awake."

"Kinda hard for me to sleep while you're faffing about all night. Seriously, do you even _need_ sleep?"

"Occasionally. Might skip it tonight."

Kate grimaced into her pillow. "Great. Just keep the noise down, will you?"

An inkling had dropped itself into Kate's mind the next day, however, that Amy's insomnia was actually that, and not all that innocent at all. At times she suspected she saw dark shadows beneath her eyes, although it could easily have been a trick of the dull light. But sometimes she caught her just staring...

And then there was what happened later that afternoon.

"Oi! Amy!" Kate hammered on the door of their room, where Amy had ensconced herself for most of the day. Kate had been busy doing rehab work in the meantime. There was no response from within.

"Come on. Know you're in there. Quit hiding yourself away and doing whatever it is you're doing, Iverson wants to talk to you." Still nothing. "Not speaking, huh? What're you doing in there? You better not have soniced the door again." She tried the handle, finding to her relief – and surprise – that she hadn't soniced it. _What's she doing in here?_

She sauntered inside and saw a river of red hair sprawled across the table, its owner slumped forward in her chair.

_What the hell?_ She stumbled forward, almost tripping over the flotsam dotting the cramped room in her rush. She reached the Time Lady, whose left cheek was pressed against the desk, eyes firmly shut. "Amy?" Kate shook her shoulders, eliciting a small twitch from her fingers in response. _Right. Asleep._ Kate wasn't one for paranoia or protectiveness, but recent events had encouraged a certain streak within her that hadn't been evident before.

_She must be stupidly tired from getting no sleep for two or three days._ Amy's hands were still on the table, her right hand loosely wrapped around her sonic screwdriver and her right clasped around some strange black object that Kate presumed was what she was busy working on. _Probably what she was doing last night too,_ she surmised as she unwrapped Amy's fingers and picked up the object, inspecting it above her eyeline. It looked vaguely similar to her sonic screwdriver – apart from being black, obviously.

_Hmm. Weird. Wonder what it does. _She turned it over in her hand, squinting, inspecting. As she did so, Amy made a strange mewling noise between closed lips, shifting in her sleep. Her now-empty hand clenched as her arm tensed suddenly, as if trying to grasp the object that Kate had removed from it, then relaxed, sliding off the desk... and brushing against Kate's exposed left knee.

Kate gasped, her fingers flying to her temple. The room and Amy had vanished. Her mind had suddenly found itself somewhere else entirely.

But it was a place she knew very, very well indeed.

* * *

><p><em>It's a silent, peaceful summer night. The little village of Leadworth is sleepy by day, sleepier by dark. Life is tranquil, unchanging, uneventful. Nothing happens here.<em>

_Until, that is, a police box literally falls from the sky and lands on a shed in a garden of a too-large house. Steam and smoke, illuminated from beneath by some mysterious golden-yellow light, billows from the open doors, venting into the clear, pristine air._

_But no one notices. Everyone is already asleep._

_Save for one little girl in a red nightdress. She dashes out of the house, chasing a strange, brown-haired man in raggedy clothes. No one has ever seen the likes of him before in the village. Most people would call the police._

_But not Amelia Pond. Nothing fazes her._

_That doesn't mean nothing confuses her, though._

"_But," she cries, running through a metal arch, "But it's just a box; how can a box have engines?" She emphasises the last word, underscoring just how patently ridiculous the concept it. She may be seven, but she's not stupid – far from it._

"_It's not a box, it's a time machine," the man replies matter-of-factly, pausing from his knotting of a lengthy rope._

_Amelia is even less impressed, and almost raises an scornful eyebrow. "What? A real one? You've got a real time machine?" Even for a seven year old, she does a fine job of injecting immense scepticism into her voice._

"_Not for much longer if I can't get it stabilised!" The man darts this way and that, tossing the rope into the open doors. "Five minute hop into the future should do it!"_

_It's ridiculous, all patently ridiculous. Amelia knows it is._

_And yet..._

"_Can I come?"_

"_Not safe in here, not yet. Five minutes. Give me five minutes; I'll be right back."_

_Amelia's face falls. Something had been born inside, a spark, an unquenchable flame... that he would be different somehow, different to all the others in her life. But the flame is in its infancy, and it flickers now. "People always say that," she replies, with a hint of resignation no seven-year old should be able to muster._

_The man turns from where he had clambered onto the box and leaps down, bending over so their faces are level. Their eyelines lock, one piercing, the other enigmatic and ancient. "Am I people? Do I even look like people? Trust me. I'm the Doctor."_

_And she does._

_Two minutes later, she's wrapped in a deep blue cotton jumper and crimson beanie, perched on a suitcase._

_Waiting._

_Twenty minutes later, she's still waiting._

_An hour, she's fallen asleep, waiting._

_She spends all night in her garden, waiting for her Raggedy Doctor to return._

_She can't possibly know what waiting will one day do to her._

* * *

><p>The TARDIS was still darkened, still empty... and waiting.<p>

Right on time, a mini-storm of electricity and smoke signalled the entry of a broad-shouldered man in a steel-blue greatcoat. Jack registered his surroundings as his mind tried to wake itself up. It took him a few seconds to work out that he was indeed back in the TARDIS console room. _Looks so friggin' different to how I remember it._

"Right," he muttered to himself. "Drawing room... past the sauna." He stumbled down the stairs, having to steady himself on the railings as he did so. For an ex-military man he really, _really_ wasn't a morning person. At the last step, he tripped, falling on his face with a curse. _Okay. This is stupid, and needs fixing ASAP._

Ten minutes later he emerged from the kitchen, coffee in hand. Oddly, the pantry was open and there was a collection of pots on the bench, as if someone – presumably Kate – was planning on cooking something but had gotten distracted as they were getting ready and not bothered to come back. He made a mental note to go and find her and ask, as well as check up on Amy. Although at this time of morning (could he really call this morning?), Kate'd be asleep – god only knew what Amy would be up to, given her sleeping patterns or lack thereof.

He sipped the steaming liquid, feeling it invigorate his body as he headed past the sauna. _First door... second door... yeah, here it is. Drawing room._ He swung the door open, finding it exactly the same as always – a collection of plush leather couches, ornate furniture, and a currently-dead fireplace.

He frowned – _why would a superluminal coupling be here?_ It'd be the sort of thing that would normally be in the TARDIS workshop – you didn't exactly entertain guests or relax with a metre long steel pole. But the Doctor told him to look, so look he did.

Half an hour later, and he'd certainly looked. He'd taken apart almost the whole room – not difficult, given the sparse furnishings – and found no sign of the coupling. It was a fairly conspicuous object so it hadn't taken him long to be sure that he wouldn't find it, but better safe than sorry.

_Why would the Doctor not realise it's here? _He headed over to the workshop, the more sensible location to find it... and didn't, after another half-hour and another room half-deconstructed. He looked up, down, and all round but he simply couldn't find it.

This was strange. The Doctor knew about every single itty bitty thing on the TARDIS – he was mind-linked to the ship, of course he would be. How could he not know where it was, if there even was one onboard? Unless...

He raised his wrist, inserting coordinates into his manipulator using the keypad. He pressed the activate button, expecting to rematerialise in the console room.

Nothing happened. The Doctor had configured it to be one-time use only.

His eyes narrowed as realisation gripped him. _Wild bloody goose chase. Thanks Doctor. If you wanted me out of the way, could have just asked._

But now that he was here, he might as well check up on Kate and Amy. He sauntered upstairs to the Time Lady's room, finding it empty. No surprise – he hadn't really expected her to be sleeping anyway. There were a few doors he didn't recognise, though...

_Ooh. Now that's cool,_ he thought, standing in a doorway between Amy's bedroom and the TARDIS kitchen. How these two rooms were connected, given they were at least fifty metres' walk away from each other... he decided not to think about it. Another door linked to the library. Oddly, he found no sign of Amy there either – _isn't this where she hangs out usually?_ _Where is she?_ He didn't know why he was getting worried – she could easily be elsewhere in the vast multitude of rooms in the time machine – but he was. He decided to double-check, by making sure Kate was still safely asleep in his bed.

He headed downstairs again, quickly finding his way to Kate's bedroom. He pushed it open, saw the cream-white walls... and his heart almost stopped.

The bed was empty, the sheets creased, the blankets lying unfolded over the edge. It was clear that no one had slept here in days.

_Oh no._

* * *

><p><em>The next morning, when her Aunt Sharon returns and finds her, she's perched on the suitcase again.<em>

_He said he'd be five minutes, she thinks. That was last evening – he'd taken far longer than just five minutes. She doesn't mind, though. Somehow, for some indescribable reason, she just has this feeling, this sense, that the mad, raggedy man who'd called himself "the Doctor", is coming back. _

_Somehow, she knows that the man who had dropped out of the sky in a police box, smashed her shed, raided her kitchen for food, eaten the weirdest combination of fish fingers and custard and fixed the scary crack in her wall was coming back for her. "Trust me," he'd said. And she does. He's not like other people._

_So she waits._

_Back at school, she tells everyone. The girls – and most of the boys – tease her and make cruel songs about her. She admonishes herself for her stupidity and ignores them. She keeps waiting._

_At home, she makes dolls, toys, drawings about her Raggedy Doctor that she's still waiting for. She also makes a little blue wooden box, a perfect, small-scale replica of the police box that crashed in her garden that evening. All her memories, all her hopes, all her waiting gets put into that box. She spends many an evening holding it, even talking to it... asking why he doesn't come back. Telling it that she'll keep waiting anyway._

_Years pass, and her Aunt Sharon grows frustrated and tired of Amelia – otherwise gifted and razor-sharp – obsessing over her imaginary friend, and calls on the psychiatrists, one after the other. They try, they pry, they bait, they cajole, they press, but they all fail. Still she waits._

_Her personality changes, slowly, gradually. She becomes even more aggressive, more cocky, more flirty. She shamelessly leverages her good looks and sharp tongue to her own benefit – but deep within, she is still the same little girl. Waiting._

_She's ten, and she's waiting. Twelve, still waiting. Fourteen. Fifteen. It gets harder and harder, but she perseveres._

_She keeps waiting._

* * *

><p><em>She has a diary. A black, spiral bound diary. No one knows it exists other than Rory. No one has ever read it apart from her. Within, she writes about anything and everything, the things that she can't say, the things she'll never say. Some about life. Some about Leadworth. Some about her classmates (and those entries are rarely flattering). But mostly about how she's waited. And waited.<em>

_She disappears for two weeks. No one knows why. Not many, aside from Rory Williams, her only truly close friend, really care. Then she comes back..._

…_and is a completely different person. No longer the funny, witty young girl. No longer. _

_She barges into her room. Hurls her bag against the wall. It thuds against the wall, slides to the floor. Fury to burn a thousand worlds is etched on her face. She spots the little blue wooden box. She's reminded again of all the years she's waited, all the pain she's endured, the imprisonment in that terrible dream of hers... because she waited. She doesn't think. Impulse drives her. She throws the box with all her strength at the wall. It shatters._

_She stands there, watching. Pauses. Then marches across to where her bag fell. Forces a hand inside. Pulls out what she wants. She opens the diary. Grabs a pen. Finds the first empty double page. With an unnaturally steady hand, she writes her entry. It's April 2004, and it's the shortest entry she's ever written. Just five words._

_'My name is Amy Pond.'_

_She's stopped waiting._

* * *

><p>She was falling. Endlessly falling through a bottomless, nameless pit. She couldn't see anything around her, but the way her body just seemed so weightless told her she was falling.<p>

Then...

She was back in the hospital, back in the room, Amy was still sound asleep on the desk, snoring softly. Kate took no notice, her head spinning like a tumble-dryer and her breathing shallow.

_What in god's name happened there?_

* * *

><p><strong>So think of those last two memory seconds a teaser. Not for the next chapter, though, which will be more plot. You will actually see those memories again, some bits from a slightly different perspective, some from a greatly expanded perspective, some almost precisely the same (I heavily utilised one of my future chapters to finish this...)<strong>

**Now it's past 3am and I really need to sleep.**


	30. The Windcatcher

**No, your eyes are ****_not _****deceiving you. I have finally – ****_finally_**** – managed to get this out. Several months, lots of drafts and wasted time later, this. Finally.**

**Now, this chapter will be ****_gigantic._**** The delay and me wanting to make up for lost time is part of that, but more to the point, there's just a lot of stuff I want to get done in one block. It's not perfect, but my drive to ****_make_**** it perfect is the main reason I burnt through so many different drafts. So I ended up giving up, and settled for this (and "this" took a while as well). I almost got it finished back then, too... then uni started again. Let's just leave that there.**

**Oh well.**

**On the chapter itself: there are three separate plotlines running here, possibly four. Try to keep up.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 30. The Windcatcher: 26 – 29 March 2011<strong>

_She used to sit outside for hours wrapped up in a blanket at night. Alone. Gazing at the beckoning pinpricks of light above._

_Sometimes she wondered if they were her friends._

_Not now. Not when the stars were so strange, yet so bright, illuminating her along with unrecognised moons she'd never grown up with. Not when they made you so easy to see._

_How could you hide when you're running from-_

"_Found you," the voice calls out behind her. A woman's voice. Sing-song but sharp. Menacing. She gasps and tries to run even faster, but in her haste she trips. Falls. Lands face dirt on alien ground, so very, very far from home. Wherever home is for her._

_She scrambles on all fours, trying to get to her feet, but it's futile. The woman catches up with her, kicks her onto her back. In the alien moonlight she finally sees her assailant – and, as the woman raises a pistol to her face from point-black range, she knows the woman will now be her murderer._

_Her eyes meet the woman's._

_They are green as emeralds, bright as stars, framed by shining, vibrant red hair._

_The woman fires._

* * *

><p>Kate had watched too many action movies as a teenage girl.<p>

It was a fairly banal thing to realise, but it was the first thing on her mind as she lay groaning on the cold hospital floor. The instant the dream had ended, she'd instinctively tried to barrel-roll (or at least what she thought was a barrel-roll) out of the way of the oncoming bullet.

Then she realised that it had been in a dream. And she was in a hospital bed – rather, she used to be.

"The hell are you doing down there?" Amy peered curiously over the side of her own bed, her emerald-green eyes glimmering in the soft night light filtering through the window.

"Weird dream."

"And so you decided to get to know the floor a bit bet'r?" Amy had clearly only just woken up – having actually _slept_ for once – so her accent was infused with drowsiness.

"I just woke up from it. If you had that dream, you'd get why." Kate replied.

"What was so weird about it?"

Kate picked herself off the floor and clambered back into the bed. "I guess weird isn't the right word. Just straight out bad, more like."

"I'm an expert on those," Amy joked. "What was it about?"

"Hard to say. Someone was chasing me, and I fell over. And then, they, um..."

"Killed you?"

"Yeah. Kinda brutal, just shot me in the face from point-blank. No idea why, but then again, it was a dream." She paused for a moment, leaving nothing but the distant noise of hospital machinery humming in the background. "Which was why I fell out of bed."

A brief silence. "Let me guess," Amy began slowly. "The person was me?"

_Holy shit._ "Um... yeah, it was. No keeping secrets from you, I guess. I forgot that you can read minds – remind me to change my facebook password," Kate joked.

Amy didn't answer.

"Amy?"

Still nothing. Kate sat up a bit straighter. "Amy? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," the Time Lady replied, her voice still light as usual. "Just try not to wake me up by falling out of bed again, yeah?"

"I'll make sure I keep that in mind in my next dream," Kate muttered sarcastically. "And by the way, you wouldn't _actually_ shoot me in the face, would you? I mean, I know we aren't best pals, but..." It seemed a stupid thing to be asking, but Kate couldn't help but be a little worried.

"Make sure I get coffee every morning and I won't," Amy joked. "We're close enough to count. Not many options on my side... but don't worry about me. Get your sleep, human," she added with a humorous glint in her eyes.

Kate rolled hers. "Yes, miss. Night night."

"Night night, Katherine."

Amy heard Kate pull up the blanket over herself. Within minutes, Kate was fast asleep again. Amy, however, just stared sideways, between the blinds and out into the artificial sky.

She'd lied. Kate _hadn't_ been the reason she'd woken up, although the blonde had freaked the living daylights out of her when she'd crashed to the floor a fraction of a second later. No, she'd woken up for the same reason Kate had. And now her mind was buzzing, restless, trying to reject what had just seemed to happen... and trying to work out how the hell it could happened.

The dream itself didn't concern Amy that much. It was a variation on a regular she'd had every now and then, ever since last November. Of course she'd been the shooter, just like on that spaceship.

No, what bugged her was considerably... weirder.

_How the bloody hell can we have the same dream at the same time?_

* * *

><p>It took real dedication to find a Time Lord.<p>

They were slippery folk, able to vanish from a timezone on a whim, reappearing a million years later and a billion light years away. Finding one was an exercise in sheer frustration. For one thing, they looked exactly liked humans, and given how abundant _they_ were throughout time and space, that meant telling them apart was... challenging.

Not to mention they were cultural chameleons – they could speak any language ever crafted perfectly, blend in to their surroundings, melt away like water through one's fingers. And if push came to shove, they were all freakishly smart and resourceful, and would probably devise some way out of their troubles without a sweat.

But above all, the _hardest_ thing about catching a Time Lord was that there simply weren't very many of them. And one of them was decidedly off-limits – it was well-known what would happen to you if you got in the way of the Doctor.

The unlucky few who _didn't_ know soon found out.

That left just one in all of time and space, and _she_ was a tough customer as well. What she lacked in experience she made up for in ability. The story of how Amelia Pond had almost single-handedly disabled an armada of starships with just a few soldiers and a phone was legendary. Not to mention the confusion and _fear_ running throughout the Dalek Empire as to how she'd brainwashed a whole platoon of elite Daleks without so much as a second glance.

_That_ was genuinely frightening, but it only served as a reminder – catching a Time Lord was the most dangerous job in the universe.

So for the man named the Windcatcher, it was a damn good thing he was getting paid plenty to do it.

His employers were rich, that much he knew. Rich and powerful enough to secretly direct the construction an enormous artificial world, thousands upon thousands of kilometres in diameter, _just_ to lure them in. They'd also fitted it with a quite extraordinary device that, whilst apparently designed to make life trivially easy by converting thoughts into electricity, was in reality a specialised Locate-A-Time-Lord machine,

He wasn't entirely sure _why_ he was supposed to catch Amelia Pond. But he never did know the _why_, and he never needed to. A signature on a contract was good enough for him.

It was just one quality that made him the greatest bounty hunter the universe had never known. Only once had he ever tried to personally capture his quarry, always preferring to stay in the shadows, working through mercenaries, laying traps, casting bait. Only once had he lost.

He had been waiting for a signal. A little psychic blip. That was the only surefire way you could find a Time Lord, and the only way you could detect one was to have an equalizer field in place. A spike in psychic energy would lead to a spike in electricity – and anyone could find one of those given the right equipment.

He had patiently gone about his business pretending to be a completely normal person, but all the while he watched and waited.

And after two years, his dedication was finally rewarded.

It was late afternoon and he was going off-shift at the clothing shop he worked at when a soft beep told him he had mail. He twiddled his glasses, bringing up the message on one lens.

_Psychic anomaly detected. Strength: Six-plus. Duration: 20 seconds. Location..._

He smiled and took out his phone, entering an number memorised for this exact occasion.

"This is the Windcatcher. I have found the target..."

* * *

><p>"Look, sir, I appreciate that this is very uncomfortable for you," the receptionist intoned in a bored voice that sounded anything but appreciative, "but we do not treat the common cold here."<p>

"_But,_" the short, stunted and rather blue alien whined, "the cough is terrible, and if I'm not better by this evening then my date-"

"Sir, I understand, I really do," the receptionist interjected in the same dull monotone, "but this is a _hospital_, so you will have to see your local physician if you want treatment. Thank you. _Next!_"

The stubby little alien moved off, muttering mutinously to himself between blatantly exaggering coughs. The receptionist took no notice of him as he took a sip of his tenth coffee that day – the beverage was the only thing that kept him sane in this job. The next in line was a frail, wispy-white haired human lady with a walking stick shuffled up. "Hello, I'm here to visit Mr Dieritas. Is he taking visitors?"

"Certainly," the receptionist replied crisply as he found the relevant file on her screen. At least _this_ old lady wouldn't be annoying him with stupid, pointless requests. "You'll find him in ward 94B on the second floor, and you're free to visit until two."

"Thank you kindly." The old lady shuffled away, revealing a man who was asking about a drug called Dipromizine for cold sores.

"The drug is called Dipro_na_zine, and the pharmacy is across the road," the receptionist told him testily. Thankyou. Next!"

No one came up. He tapped his fingers on the desk impatiently – this was a hospital, time was of the essence. A wasted second could be a wasted life. _"Next!"_

"Oh! Sorry, did you mean me?" A hurried, frantic voice called out from somewhere to the side, and a man appeared before him so suddenly he toppled backwards off his chair in surprise. "Hello! I'm the Do–are you alright?" The man peered over the counter in concern as the receptionist picked himself off the floor.

"Yes, yes. Erm – good afternoon. How may I assist you?" Although his voice remained clear and professional, the receptionist's mood was rapidly darkening – today had not been a good day.

The man smiled warmly, as he took out a small, silver device and pointed it at his computer. "Tough gig?"

The receptionist almost fell out of his chair again. "Sorry, what-?"

"Your coffee mug is almost brand new, the patterning clearly defined, yet the stains on it are those of someone who's been drinking coffee out of it for years. Assuming, of course, normal amounts of drinking which obviously doesn't apply here." The warm, glimmered light in the man's eyes as he pocketed the device. "You, my good man, are stressed out."

Flabbergasted didn't cut it. "How the devil did you work that out?"

"Oh, just a guess. A good one, as it turned out." The man, who was dressed in some decidedly odd clothing – did people seriously _wear_ bow-ties? – looked behind his shoulder, spotting a queue of curious and understandably impatient onlookers behind him. "Anyway, I'll let you get back to work. Toodles!"

"Wait – wait!" The receptionist cried out, as the man disappeared out of sight. He shook his head.

_Just another annoying freak._

But for some reason the man was stuck in his head...

This was bad.

Very, very bad.

"Amy! Kate!" He could yell and shout all day, but Jack knew that it was useless – they were long gone. And by the looks of things, they'd been gone for several days.

_Goddamnit._ Those girls – those reckless, uncontrollable girls. Amy he could understand, trying to control her would be like trying to hold fire in his bare hands; impossible and probably rather painful. He was a bit miffed that she would run off – no, _roll_ off into the unknown despite being so obviously incapacitated, but she was Amy, and a Time Lord. Self-preservation was not a massive priority of hers. Despite that, Jack wasn't especially worried about her. Even a mute, crippled Amy was not someone to be crossed.

Kate, on the other hand...

Human. Very, very mortal. Inexperienced. Cocky. On an unknown world and potentially alone. This was a recipe for something unthinkable, and _precisely_ what he'd feared – and what Kate had brushed off. Hell, he, Rory and the blonde had even had a loud and heated row over it just days before the TARDIS had returned and woken half the village up. Kate had 'won' by virtue of being louder and impossible to budge, but they worried about her nonetheless.

Even Amy, now that he thought about it properly – yes, she was a Time Lord, but she'd been travelling with the Doctor for less than a year. A year! There was no way she could really fend for herself in an uncharted and dangerous forest, surely?

The best case would be if they had gone together to explore or do whatever, but that was surely impossible. He hadn't forgotten the resentment Amy had shown Kate the last time they'd been aboard the TARDIS together, and she hadn't seemed to have changed her mind yet. He was sure she would eventually, they had far too much in common – but not yet.

No, far more likely was that Amy had gotten bored and rolled off on her own, and Kate had run after her to try and find her once she realised the Time Lady had gone missing. Or vice versa. Either way, chances were that they were alone... and if he was being honest, they would be repticore lunch right now.

But he had rarely been accused of being an overly honest man, so he shelved that thought. If there was _any_ possibility, any chance whatsoever that they were still alive and safe somehow, he had to get out there and find them.

_Right. Will need a gun, then._

He turned and headed back into the bowels of the silent, immobile time machine to fetch his spare blaster. Five minutes later, he was back, racing through the console room and out into the morning bloom of the tranquil forest.

* * *

><p>The top of the hour meant a change in shifts, which meant the receptionist was, mercifully, off for the day. He had wanted to help people, try to repay some of his debts – but he was no doctor. In fact he had no medical knowledge at all. So he got stuck at a desk job at the visitor's entrance to the hospital, directing people where they needed to go... and turning away those who clearly had no idea at all. And they numbered in the many.<p>

He collected his coat, finished off his twelfth coffee for the day and was about to leave when he spotted something out of the corner of his eye. A flash of olive-green tweed and unruly chocolate brown hair.

_What...?_

His natural instinct was to ignore him. Just another irritant to add to his ever growing levels of stress. But... he'd known about that, hadn't he? Had guessed with a single look. Just one look.

_Screw it._

He jogged after the strange man. "Hey – hey!"

The man, still with his navy-blue bowtie, spun on the spot to face him. "Oh! Hello. Did I drop something?"

"No."

"Oh, good. Always leaving stuff behind, me. Fortunately never anything too precious or dangerous," the man said, frowning slightly. "Although there was this one time when I was towing a space caravan through New Venezuela... anyway. How's the coffee?"

He decided to evade the question. "Did you need something back there? Because I never heard what you were actually looking for."

"Oh, no problems," the man replied airily. "I was just looking for something."

"For what?"

"Oh, just... things. A certain something."

Something about the way the man said it twigged in the receptionist's mind. "Something... or someone?"

"Well, something, a sort of listy-data-ey-thingy from your systems that might tell me..." The man stopped fidgeting and sighed. "Yes, someone."

"Oh. Someone special?"

A slow, wistful smile. "I suppose you could say that."

"I hope you find her – it must be a her, right? Oh, and what's your name?"

"Name's the Doctor. Well, I'm told it's my name, anyway. That's what people call me. That's what I call me. So I guess that makes it my name, by definition," the man replied, sidestepping the first of the two questions. The Doctor didn't want to reveal anything about Amy he didn't strictly need to – as Amy would have wanted.

The receptionist blinked. "Err... OK. Doctor... who, exactly?"

The Doctor smiled good-naturedly. "Good question."

* * *

><p>Amy had never liked hospitals.<p>

Strange thing too, given that her ex-fiancée was a nurse – but then again, part of the reason _that_ had happened was so Rory could be more like 'her' Doctor. However, she'd not meant _that_ sort of Doctor, so she went on disliking hospitals all the same. So clinical. Chillingly heartless. And full of needles to boot.

They'd always sent shivers down her spine, and did so now as she made her way through the corridors, Kate watching behind her. The girl had suddenly become very protective and concerned about Amy's welfare over the three days after that seemingly shared dream they'd had (though Kate didn't know it yet).

"Look, Kate, seriously," Amy had eventually said, with more than a little exasperation after Kate had busied herself yesterday morning getting two steaming mugs of coffee.

"You are _not_ my mother," she grumbled. She'd never been mollycoddled in her life before and she certainly wasn't going to let it start now. But she'd taken the coffee anyway.

Perhaps Kate had taken her a bit too seriously the other night.

Mercifully, the external memory storage she'd made had worked to some degree. Since she'd made it, her dreams had become gradually more pleasant once she'd siphoned off a sizeable chunk of her past into that chunk of black thought-metal, as she called it. Sharing dreams with Kate was still weirding her out, but she could live with that. At least she could finally catch up on some desperately-needed sleep, so she was feeling a little better now as she swung her way into Iverson's office.

Maybe he'd have news on where the Doctor was...

"Afternoon, Miss Pond. Good to see you walking again, but before you start, no, Amy, I don't know where he is," he said, not even looking up from the screen on his desk.

_Maybe not, then._

"So... why'd you want to see me, then?" Amy asked with a hint of surliness, as she plopped herself down on a chair opposite him. Kate waited outside.

"Just a chat. " He lowered the screen and looked the Time Lady straight in the eye. She was still, of course, stunning to behold, but a few things had changed since he'd first met her. Gone was the frantic concern she'd had for her friend, the welcoming warmth in her eyes as he'd tried to cure her. Now they were permanently narrowed, her chin raised slightly.

Hard. Immovable. Almost arrogant. Every bit as aloof as everything he'd read about her species had suggested.

_What's happening to her?_

But that was for another time. "I see you've been giving the nurses hell."

Amy tossed her hair and folded her arms. "And?"

The nurses and Amy had developed a bad relationship over the past few days. They kept wanting to treat her obvious ailment. Amy kept refusing. They suggested IV drips, spinal taps and other unpleasantness involving needles. Amy _hated_ needles. It didn't end well for them.

The last straw was when she'd had another of those debilitating migraines... and someone had offered her aspirin. Not a smart move.

Iverson shook his head. "They're not Time Lord experts, but try not to take their heads off, will you? They're only trying to help."

Amy sighed. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. I've just been in a bad mood in the last few days, OK? I'll try better with the next lot."

Iverson doubted that that would work, but nonetheless... "Well, that's a start. Onto business, then. You know my job, right?"

"I'll have a guess. You wait here, twiddling your thumbs until an alarm goes off in the forest, then you rush off to whisk away whichever moron got stuck there before they get cut to ribbons. How am I doing?"

He had to chuckle at that. "Nothing gets past you, does it?"

"And don't you forget it."

"I'll try not to. But that's not my _only_ job. And if I were to guess, the reason your friend the Doctor went into the wide blue yonder was to work out why your time machine had suddenly stopped working when you got here."

Amy's eyes widened briefly, but she didn't show her surprise for long. "And...?"

"And that's been the way for _years_, Miss Pond. Dozens upon dozens of time travellers, some by vortex manipulator, some by other means, have come here and gotten stuck. They can travel to different places on Earthsphere but they can't go anywhere beyond or travel in time. You're just the latest in a long, long line of time travellers to get stuck here. There's just something about this place which makes time travel impossible."

"I already knew that, thanks," Amy pointed out. She wasn't totally incompetent as a Time Lord, and could tell what the strangely dead temporal feel to the place meant. "What happened to the rest?"

"Oh, not much. They come to me, I send them off to the engineers. There are workarounds you can use, and most of them are sent on the way without incident. Some stuff about recalibrating the equalizer field – don't ask me, though, I'm not an engineer."

"Right. So what does this have to do with me?"

"I told my superiors about you, and asked if they're sending a team to fix it. Haven't replied yet."

"So can I go?"

"Not yet. You're still in my care, remember, and I haven't discharged the two of you yet. But besides that, I was reading about your species yesterday, and specifically about the man you travel with. The Doctor."

"Oh." Amy leaned back in her chair. "What about him?"

Iverson pulled up his screen again and clicked through to a stored page he'd found the other day, perusing it idly. "You told me the other day that you didn't know this place existed, and neither did he. Apparently he has a penchant for the unknown, it would have piqued his interest." He glanced sidelong at her. "Am I wrong?"

"No."

"And apparently, your species has always been drawn to lush, sprawling, unusual worlds, especially paradise worlds such as this one. Correct?"

Amy shifted a little in her seat. "I guess so."

"And that nothing perks you up as the prospect of some unusual aliens that weren't supposed to be there placing people in mortal danger." He paused. "Like, for example, the repticore in the forest."

Amy folded her arms. "What are you saying, this whole setup's just bait?"

Iverson sighed and folded down his screen again. "I don't have any evidence, but it's a rather unlikely coincidence, no?"

"The Doctor always tells me that the universe loves to pull these things for fun, and coincidences just happen sometimes."

He leaned forward, placing his chin on his hands. "And do you believe him?"

Amy couldn't answer that.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<strong>


	31. Bait

**CHAPTER 31. Bait: 29 March 2011**

In another day and time Jack would have bookmarked this location in this vortex manipulator to come back to, maybe bring a friend. Or a date. It really was something, the lush, golden foliage of the canopy, the white-flecked mountains as backdrop, the purest of blue skies. Whoever had built this place sure as hell knew how to build a scene.

But not right now.

He scrambled over another set of riverside boulders, cutting a path straight through the bushes to where he guessed they might have gone. He'd spotted clear wheelchair tracks leading straight along the river, leading along the same path the Doctor and he had traversed several days ago. Based on that he guessed that it was Amy who had gotten bored, predictably, and decided to go after them herself.

Hopefully, based on the lack of loud alarms, she was fine. Even more hopefully Kate would be with her, having followed the tracks like he was.

He cut a swathe through the think forest undergrowth and burst into the artificial sunlight, the river flowing ahead of him. He gasped as he saw the sight in front of him.

No fewer than six dead repticore lay before him, their eyes glassed over and their once-glittering scales begging to turn a murky, clouded brown. He could see instantly why – all had a line of scorch marks across them, a clear sign that they'd blasted with electron plasma. That was good – that meant Amy not only had his gun but was well enough to use it.

He didn't even consider the possibility that Kate could have done it. Alright, the girl could shoot, he knew that from their escape from the Dalek drill, but to pull off a move like this? That took serious skill.

He gave it no further thought, however, because he had just spotted something that had made him let out a loud gasp. It was silver and on its side next to several discarded camping bags and and the remains of a campfire.

Amy's wheelchair. He raced over to get a closer look.

Had she recovered so quickly that she'd been able to walk? Then why did it look like she'd been dragged out of it in a hurry, based on the way it had been tipped on its side? Was that Kate? Did that mean they were together? If so, where were they now? If not, who had taken her – was she OK?

Far too many questions, none of which had answers for.

That had to change. He had to find out what happened to them and where they were. He looked around briefly, and almost smacked himself on the head when he spotted the heavy rucksack again.

Of course. So obvious – Amy certainly couldn't have carried her own food, water and clothes. So she'd roped Kate in – hopefully not by force. Well, that meant they'd been together. Good. He looked around to see if there were any obvious clues to where they'd gone or, worse, where they'd been taken.

No. Nothing he could tell. Just a forest and some dead repticore. He realised for the first time that he recognised this spot – it was where the Doctor and he had triggered the alarm.

_Maybe a coincidence? _He didn't believe in those. He frowned – he had this sudden feeling, deep in his stomach, that something was gravely amiss here. But he had no idea what. Perhaps Amy had left a clue before she and Kate had (hopefully) dashed for safety?

He started searching around. _Come on, Amy,_ he thought as he searched, _just a note or something. _He pulled out some half eaten food, a novel he guessed she'd been reading and Amy's iPod (_of course_) from the wheelchair. A quick flick through the novel confirmed there was nothing of interest there – hell, he couldn't even read most of it, it was in some alien language and the TARDIS translation matrix hadn't caught up yet.

He searched the bags – nothing interesting there either. _Damn_. His heart was starting to race – this was getting desperate. How the hell could he find them without any clues?

He was about to go back to that book again to search more thoroughly and even considered listening to her iPod to see if she'd left something there when he spotted something lying by a rock that wasn't supposed to be there. A black book with Amy's name on it.

_Hello. What's this?_ If she'd left a note, it'd be here – but where did she get this from? Last he'd known her diary was TARDIS-blue. And given the wear on the page edges, the scruffiness of the cover and the, well, childishness of the handwriting when she'd written her name down, it looked as if it came from her childhood. Whatever – he wasn't worrying about that now. If he had to read through reams of dreary teenage girl angst, so be it.

He was about to start flicking through when a very familiar blaring siren pierced the air around him.

_Shit._ He'd lingered too long.

He pocketed the diary and ran for the TARDIS as quickly as he could.

* * *

><p>"So what do you suggest I do?"<p>

Amy had only just learned to walk again, but already she was pacing back and forth in her own imitable style. The idea that the Doctor – and herself too – had walked blindly into such a potentially obvious trap was unnerving at best. Not least because it would explain so many odd things about the place: the temporal anomalies. The TARDIS blocking most of her psychic abilities, so she could hide herself. That bizarre feeling that the Doctor was in terrible danger.

A feeling she now had for herself.

"Look, Amy, calm down. I don't have any evidence at all that it is a trap, just a weird coincidence, and whilst you're in my care you're safe. Unless, of course-"

He was interrupted, however, by a piercing blood-curdling shriek, and the crashing sound of a door being opened. Amy, energized instantly by the interruption, and suddenly finding herself in full control of her physical and psychic faculties, stood and spun in a flash, sonic in hand and pointing at a very familiar scene.

"Drop the weapon, Time Lord," the dark-suited, black-haired man snarled, "or I blow your friend's brains all over the wall." And with a handgun pressed against Katherine Broad's temple and his arm around her throat, it was no empty threat.

"The name's Amy and it's not a _weapon_, moron. It's a sonic screwdriver." Amy shot back, eyes darting up and down for an opening of some kind, trying to block out the sudden flood of other people's emotions that had been absent for days. She had to keep calm, and not herself be overwhelmed by everyone else's fear. The man's gun was very old-school by Earthsphere standards. _Mechanical, not electronic. Damn. _No jamming here, then.

The man leered at her. "It's as good as."

Iverson was standing behind her, edging ever-so-slowly to the cabinet where he kept Kate's blaster. "Look," he intoned calmly. "I'm sure that with a little calmness, we can-"

"Shut up! No talk. Either the Time Lady comes with us, unarmed, or you all die here and now. Your choice, I don't really care either way." He pressed the gun even more firmly into Kate's head to emphasise the point, drawing a breathless squeak from her.

"I'm a Time Lord. What's stopping me melting your mind from the inside?" Amy asked. _God, I've forgotten how much I can do with my mind..._ but now was not a time to gloat. Her friend was in danger.

He grinned at her, lopsided and downright evil. "Oh, I'm sure you could. But I don't think you could do it before I put a bullet into your friend's head here, and I'm hardly alone now, am I?"

_Shit._ If he _did_ have backup, then he was right. And there was no way she would let Kate die like this... but she couldn't see a way around it. _Damn damn damn damn damn._ She moved her intense emerald gaze to the blonde's liquid hazel. She could see the fear, the confusion... _damn._

_I'm so sorry. So, so sorry._

But as Kate's eyes found hers, something extraordinary happened. The shadow of a smile crept over her lips and her left eyelid twitched. Barely discernible, but unmistakable.

A wink.

And then...

_**I've got this, **_Kate told her wordlessly. _**Look at my arms.**_

Amy almost dropped the sonic. _**What the... how-?**_

_**Not a clue. We can work it out later, alright? Just distract him somehow and I'll give him hell.**_

_**Right.**_ She needed a distraction... and glancing upwards to the ceiling, she found one. _Perfect. __**Close your eyes, OK?**_

_**Done.**_ To Kate's captor, it just looked like a cowardly expression of fear, but she knew better.

"Well?" He snarled. "What's your decision, Time Lord? Otherwise I'll just cap the tart and be done with it."

Amy just smiled. That same, bone-chilling smile she'd had the last time Kate had found herself in this situation. Of course, she'd called her Broad then, and she'd had been her worst enemy. How times had changed. "For the second and last time, the name," she told him, "is Amy Pond. _And don't you goddamn forget it, sport._"

She flicked her wrist upwards, pointed the sonic at the ceiling and activated it.

The flourescent tube above them exploded, producing a blinding flash and showering everyone in the room with shards of glass. Instinctively, Iverson, Amy and the dark-suited man raised their arms to protect their eyes from the glass and the dazzling light, but not Kate.

With the gun no longer against her temple and the grip on her neck momentarily loosened, she buckled her knees and, eyes still closed, drove her elbow straight into her captor's groin. As he crumpled with a high-pitched yelp, she spun and ripped the pistol out of his hands. She smashed the butt into the side of his head, knocking him out cold before he had even worked out what had happened.

"Idiot," the blonde spat, twirling the weapon in her fingers. "Didn't even bother to restrain me."

"So I guess that answers the question of a trap," Iverson remarked, now having retrieved Kate's blaster from the cabinet. He bent down to inspect the unconscious man. There were no identifying markings on his clothing or in his pockets. Nothing to hint at who or what he was working for.

Amy, meanwhile, simply stared at Kate with unconcealed shock. _**How the hell...?**_

"Geez, Amy, I was hoping _you'd_ explain it, personally," Kate replied. "I don't have any idea what made me do it, but it seemed like a good idea."

"No, no – I get that. But, I mean, how..."

"I've got no clue, Amy. None at all. It feels seriously weird, so let's just save it for emergencies, alright? I'm still human, remember."

"Right."

"You two care to explain what you're going on about?" Iverson glanced up suspiciously.

"Later."

"Fine." He stood, having finished his inspection of the still-unconscious man on the floor. "You've got to get out of here. Use the fire exit, I'll hold the rest off." He pulled out a small key from his pocket. "My shuttle is just outside. You know which one it is. Get in and get the hell away from here."

Amy took it and the blaster with some trepidation. "Go where? And where will you be?"

"Not important. Just put as much distance between you and this place as possible. I'll catch up."

A groaning noise below them indicated the man was stirring again.

"_Go."_

This time Amy didn't argue.

* * *

><p><em>How the hell can those things move so fast without legs?<em>

Jack Harkness had absolutely no idea, and by the looks of things he wouldn't get a chance to find out before being killed it any number of unpleasant ways. He'd barely made it a hundred metres before the familiar, tall, red-eyed figures of the repticore had closed in behind him. So he did what came most naturally to him – he started shooting.

He'd felled two already, but another two just took their place. He was trying to run and fire behind him at the same time – not an easy task. For once, he wished he hadn't worn his greatcoat – it was bloody unwieldy. He tried to gun down the repticore closest to him, only narrowly missing a ten-inch long spine that sailed into a tree next to him. He missed, but in the process of turning, he overbalanced and tripped over a tree root running over the forest.

He tried to pick himself back up and get moving again, but it was too late.

The next spine hit him square in the back.

He cried out in pain, already feeling his vision blur and his limbs weaken. He knew he was done for.

His last conscious thought was that he hoped that these repticore didn't bury or eat their victims, as unlikely as that might be. He knew from experience that trying to dig himself out of the ground – or, worse, a stomach – took a bloody long time.

Time that his friends probably didn't have.

* * *

><p>A quiet day in a hospital didn't quite have the same meaning as anywhere else.<p>

Sure, there were no freak superbug outbreaks meaning that everyone had to go to work suitably attired to explore a nuclear meltdown, like last year. Nor were there any mentally disturbed patients who needed to be literally tied to their beds, lest they hurt themselves on the litany of expensive and sharp objects around them – that had certainly livened up the day last week. It certainly helped that the shift rotation meant he was out of the Emergency ward and up on the second floor today, where things were far calmer.

His first port of call was two girls in the spacious double ward on the far edge of the hospital – Mses. Amy Pond and Katherine Broad. The notes were unusually slim. Ms Broad was listed as 24 years of age, but had no recorded date or place of birth! Well, maybe the records had corrupted somewhere along the way, although that certainly would have been a first. Maybe he was an offworlder who hadn't been registered properly.

Regardless, her condition was hardly mysterious – shot by repticore spine. Mercifully, not a poisoned one or she would've been dead within a day despite the efforts of the finest medical technology in the known universe. Nor a tranquilliser spine, which could have some nasty side effects. Evidently the one that had shot her had been looking to kill and kill quickly, and ironically had saved her life in doing so. So everything seemed to be going well, and the things that weren't going so swimmingly – well, nothing that a professional doctor like him couldn't fix in a jiffy.

The other file was even stranger. All it had was a name, Amy Pond, and five words, scrawled in the handwriting of one of the higher-ups in management: "Time Lord. Do not treat."

Well. OK, then.

That was easy enough to follow, but it made no sense whatsoever. He resolved to find out upon meeting her what that was all about as he strode towards the ward. As he approached it, he could hear the sounds of shouting and... _screaming?_

_Must be some commotion down in Emergency._ Hardly unheard of.

He kept walking, reaching a fork in the corridor where the ward was.

"Good afternoon, ladies, I'm-" He shuddered to a halt, stopping mid-sentence as he looked up from his notes. The ward was empty, the only sign of its occupants an array of strange-looking objects on the table.

_What the...?_

He turned and left the ward to see if they were around the area and found himself staring straight down the barrel of a gun.

"What the-"

"Shut it," the gunman, dressed in an impeccable black suit, snarled at him. The shouts, screams and now the unmistakable report of gunshots drifted even louder now from the staircase. "Where is she? Where is the Time Lord?"

_Surely that should be Time Lady...? _But this was a terrible time to be a smart-alec. He tried to make his voice as calm and level as possible. "Look, buddy, I don't know who you're talking about, OK? Just – just let me-"

"Don't lie to me_. _I know this is their ward. They're wanted, so tell me _now_ or I put a bullet in your brain!" To emphasise the point, the man pushed the gun towards him threateningly. A little ball of fear hardened in the back of his throat – this guy wasn't kidding. Or, it seemed, patient.

"Sir, I promise you-"

"_Now!" _The man pressed the gun against his forehead, clicking the safety off. He opened his mouth to respond, but a voice interrupted him.

An unknown, heavily accented girl's voice.

"Oi, idiot-face!"

Both turned to see a mass of dark crimson and brown leather jacket flying straight towards the dark suited man. He tried to twist, to switch his aim from the doctor to the incoming girl but it was too late. She slammed headlong into him in a rough approximation of a rugby tackle, knocking them both to the floor. The gun discharged harmlessly into the floor (eliciting yet more screams from below) and flew out of his hand as the pair rolled across the floor. The man landed on his back, his face twisting as he recognised the round face, the blood-red hair, the burning emerald eyes above him.

"_You._"

"Me," the girl replied. "Have we met?"

"You're the Time Lady," He grinned maliciously up at her. "How nice of you to bring yourself to me, MrsPond."

"I'm not married, sport."

"And when I give you to the Windcatcher, you never will be. He'll take care of-"

But he never said out _what_ he'd take care of, because his voice died in a splutter, his eyes rolling up their sockets and his head rolling limply to the side.

The girl froze, clearly taken aback. She reached into her leather flying jacket and pulled out a silver cylindrical object, pointing at the immobile heap below her and flicking it up as if taking some kind of reading. A frown crossed her face as she read it.

She disentangled herself from the immobile figure and stood, dusting off her jacket. The doctor's heart skipped a beat when he finally got a proper look at her. She was slim and long-legged, at least six feet tall, with long, red hair that seemed to shine in the dull hospital lighting.

"Oi!" Another girl, this one shorter with shoulder-length wavy blonde hair, rosy cheeks and deep hazel eyes, came up the corridor behind the ginger. "There you are, what the hell are you doing?"

"Taking a shortcut," the ginger replied with her sharp accent. "I need to pick up my stuff on the way too." She bent down and placed two fingers on the man's neck, evidently feeling for a pulse.

"What're you doing now?" The other girl asked, agitated. "Come on, there'll be more of them soon."

"Trying to find out what happened to this guy."

The other girl only gave the heap below her a cursory glance. "Right. Now _come on._ The fire exit is this way." She tugged at the ginger's jacket without success.

"Didn't I tell you? We're taking a shortcut." She stood turned and caught sight of the man whose life she had just saved for the second time. "Oh. Hello."

He was still half in shock. "What – what the-"

"Oh, you know. Mercenaries from outer space." Her eyes met his for the first time as she spoke, vivid, sparkling emeralds – entrancing and as beautiful as the rest of her, but disconcertingly intense. He almost had to look away, so strong were the shivers that ran down his spine because of her gaze. She brushed past him into the room, stuffing the objects on the desk into a small bag.

"Can you find us a place to stay?" A sidelong glance silenced the other girl, who seemed ready to object.

He was completely unprepared for this. "Well – I-"

More gunshots from below. The redhead tapped her feet on the ground impatiently. "Come _on._ Yes or no? Because otherwise I'll have to do something crazy and I'd really rather not."

Something told him she wasn't joking, but still. He was a professional doctor. He had a job to do. "No. I have to stay here with the patients – there's going to be a huge mess once this is all sorted out, I need to be around to help them. Sorry."

The girl shrugged her shoulders. "Fair enough." She pulled out the odd silver device, pointed it straight at the ceiling and pressed the button.

Instantly, every single fire alarm and fire sprinkler in the hospital activated. Michael yelled in alarm, ducking for cover as the ceiling sprinkler drenched his overcoat.

"Sorry about that, but I need a distraction and I did kinda warn you," the girl shouted over the deafening alarms, turning the device towards the window and shattering the glass. "C'mon, Kate. Time to bail from this party." She made her way over to the now-open window and vaulted out and onto the pavement fifteen feet below.

The blonde muttered and shook her head as she followed. "Bloody show-off."

* * *

><p>If Amy were being honest, she would've had to admit that she'd misjudged badly; she hadn't expected a fifteen-foot drop to feel <em>that<em> high. She'd never been afraid of heights, so when she'd hit on the plan to not use the fire exit – which she guessed would almost certainly have been guarded – she thought nothing of a mere fifteen foot drop. She'd once fallen a good kilometre or so into the mouth of a starwhale with no ill effects, for goodness' sake.

What she _hadn't_ factored in was the fact that her legs were only just starting to regain strength, as she'd only just started walking again. So instead of gracefully landing on all fours and being ready to take off and hijack some form of transport, her legs crumpled instantly beneath her. Her body hit the asphalt hard, knocking the wind out of her and leaving deep scrapes and bruises all over her body.

A few seconds later, she heard a solid _thump_ as Kate followed after her with infinitely more poise. She felt firm hands lifting her beneath her shoulders.

"That," Kate told her firmly, "was the worst shortcut in history."

Amy didn't feel like being honest right now. "Worked, didn't it?"

"Well, yeah, but it made you look like an absolute moron. How'd you not remember that your legs weren't working?"

"Oi, shut it," Amy warned as she dusted herself off. There were scrapes all over her legs and arms and a nasty gash on her right cheek that was starting to bleed. She bit her lip as the stinging began to bite. Kate let Amy wrap an arm around her shoulders for balance. "Come on. We need to get a shuttle."

"How the hell do those things fly?" Kate asked as Amy directed her towards one of the bus-sized silver machines that she presumed was a 'shuttle'. Having been unconscious (and not too far from death) on her first trip, she had no idea how they were supposed to fly. To her, they just looked like big metal boxes with no wings, engines or any other kind of obvious propulsion.

"Psychic energy," Amy replied, as if it was completely obvious. The sound of gunfire continued from within the hospital – clearly, someone had found out that the girls weren't where they were supposed to be. "Come on. We've gotta get out of here."

"Wait," Kate frowned. "You're telling me that we're about to jack someone's car?"

"Or someone's ambulance," a gruff voice called out behind them. They turned to see Iverson striding behind them, his upper lip puffed and bloodied but otherwise exactly the same as they last saw him.

"I thought you told us to go and that-"

"I'd catch up with you? Change of plan. You girls won't last out there on your own."

Amy narrowed her eyes. "I'm a _Time Lady._ I think I can manage, thanks. Besides which, it's best for all of us if we-"

_Crack._

Kate would never be more thankful for her friend's super-fast reflexes. Amy, who had an arm around her back, had suddenly pulled them both down to the ground with astonishing speed just as the unmistakable whip-crack of a bullet flashed over their heads.

In the same motion, Amy had taken the Kate's gun which she'd jammed haphazardly into her pocket and fired in the general direction of where she thought the shooter was.

"Did you get them?" Kate asked breathlessly as the girls picked themselves from the ground.

"Dunno," Amy replied, wide-eyed and searching like an eagle for any suspicious activity. "I wasn't really aiming."

"Maybe you got lucky," Iverson suggested, running over to them and helping the girls make their way to the shuttle. "Whoever that was, I don't think they missed by much. I have no idea how you did that, Amy, it was if you knew where that shot was going before it was actually fired." He placed his palm on the shuttle door, which recognised his handprint and opened to let the threesome in.

"So have you changed your mind?" Iverson asked wryly as Amy clambered gingerly inside.

"I don't really like getting shot at," Amy pointed out.

The Windcatcher lowered the rifle from a rooftop half a mile away as he watched the shuttle disappear into the azure sky.

_Damn._

It had all gone to plan. The goons he'd hired had done their jobs perfectly – namely, they'd completely failed to do what he'd told them to do. They'd caused sheer chaos in a working hospital as a result, but that was no concern to him. Of more annoyance was the fact that one of them had identified him, which was a crime that had only one punishment.

He'd thought his reputation would mean that none of the goons would be fool enough to say his name for fear of having their existence abruptly ended, but you could never insure against stupidity. A little flick of his glasses later, twelve grams of neurotoxin had been deposited in the offender's cortex from a micro-syringe he hadn't even been aware of. So that killed that little security blunder, quite literally.

Still. In the long term, that shouldn't have been a problem, since the Windcatcher was planning to end this here and now anyway.

Most importantly, they'd driven the Time Lord out into the open along with her friend. Just as he'd planned, she had decided to be too clever and exited straight out the hospital window rather than taking the fire exit, which whilst risky was more sheltered.

They'd even been unknowingly charitable and stayed still for him, talking to someone whilst he took aim.

All it would have taken was one well placed shot, and he could move in for the capture...

But the Time Lords were named so for a reason. Somehow, she had dragged her blonde-haired friend out of harm's way. Some impossible instinct had foiled him at the last second. In the blink of an eye, his plan had gone from perfect to ruined.

_So be it._

He'd try again next time. He was, after all, dedicated.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<strong>


	32. A Special Mind

**Differential geometry is going to be the death of me, I swear. Anyway...**

**The next few chapters – and this story at large – draw very heavily on a certain interpretation of how Amy was written and acted in Series 6. Another way of looking at it is a highly compressed and concentrated version of what the Doctor's gone through in his life. Yeah, it's not a happy time for her. I've been hinting that Amy is going to have an emotional and psychological disintegration for quite a long time now... this is where it begins.**

**This chapter will go up in several parts (since they were written as one very long chapter). All are extremely Amy-centric. Both end on similar notes (plagal cadences? Ho ho ho). We will get back to the Doctor and then Jack in a big way soon, but this is Amelia Pond's story first and foremost, and this is a critical time in her (re-)development.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 32. A Special Mind: 29 March 2011<strong>

The commotion at the hospital soon had flow-on effects, and Michael soon found himself being paged.

"What's that?" The Doctor asked curiously. The Doctor was having a stroll, Michael having unable to shake his fascination with the bow-tie wearing man. Or alien, as it soon transpired.

"Pager. Apparently something happened at some other hospital on the other side of Earthsphere, and life will get a bit busy over the next few weeks." He sighed. Reception work really wasn't his wasn't his idea of helping people...

"You'll get that medical degree, don't worry," the Doctor told him kindly.

"How the devil-"

"Come on, now. Why else would you be working in a hospital yet so annoyed with it? It's because you want to be on the other side, actually treating sick people."

"Is that what you do? Help people? Is that why you're called the Doctor?"

"I suppose it is. Now-"

_**Doctor?**_

The Doctor's back straightened so quickly he almost knocked the table over. He could tell Michael was asking something, but he could no longer hear him. He could no longer hear anything except that voice that had just entered his mind.

_**It's me, Amy, I'm here.**_

Amy didn't seem to take any notice. _**Doctor, are you there?**_

He frowned. Was she pulling his leg? _**Yes, Amelia, I'm here.**_

_**Doctor, answer me! Come on, I can feel you there. **_There was a frantic, worried tone in her voice that he'd rarely ever heard – she wasn't pulling his leg.

_**Amy, I'm here. The Doctor. Me.**_

There was no reply for a long, long time, then a sigh so deep he sighed aloud himself. _**Fine. You're not answering. But I'm just going to keep talking anyway, because I know you're there.**_

She couldn't hear him. Why couldn't she hear him?

The answer came straight away. _That damned equaliser field._ There was just too much disturbance from all the thoughts being used to boil kettles, switch on lights, fly shuttles and any number of other mundane day-to-day activities. He couldn't project his own thoughts strongly enough for her to pick up above the noise.

_**Maybe you can hear me, and you are talking, but I just can't hear you,**_ he heard Amy muse.

_Smart girl._

_**Whatever. Hopefully I'll survive to yell at you in person. **_

That made him pause for a second. _Survive...?_

_**I just wanted to say that I'm sorry. For being an idiot and not listening. Kate and I are on the run now, because someone just tried to kill us. No idea who, except that he's called the Windcatcher.**_

The Doctor almost fell out of his chair at that. He knew that name. Knew it very well indeed.

_**I don't know how long I can keep talking this loudly, though – I think he's tracking me by my thoughts. The TARDIS was protecting me, but it doesn't seem to be working any more. We're on the run. If you can hear us, come find us. Please. That's all I ask, Doctor... don't leave me.**_

_Never. I will never, ever leave you, Amelia Pond._

_**If you can't hear me... ah, screw that. Just find us, okay? I can't tell you where we'll be, for obvious reasons, but you know how to find me. You better know. Otherwise I'll be mad. And probably dead, **_she added.

_**Goodbye, raggedy man. I love you. Now go on. Save me... again.**_

With that, she was gone, leaving only silence in his mind. He didn't reciprocate her final gesture.

_I'll do that in person._

He'd met the Windcatcher before. It had been an experience he'd tried hard to forget, but couldn't. If he was after Amy...

_No._ He would _not_ let that happen.

"Doctor?" Michael was getting worried now.

The Doctor snapped his attention back to reality, his mind suddenly clear, filled with intent. He fixed his intense gaze onto the man. "Now, Michael, how would you like to go on an adventure?"

* * *

><p>"So what the hell happened there? I still don't–<em>ow!<em>"

It took about half an hour, but Amy had finally relented and let Kate have a look at the scrapes all over her body. As the Doctor occasionally (very, very occasionally) reminded his Time Lady counterpart, she wasn't invincible or armoured. As such, throwing herself fifteen feet onto rough asphalt with legs that weren't working properly had to class, in Kate's words, as "an epic dumb move".

"Seriously," Kate told her as she applied some evil-smelling balm to the litany of cuts and bruises on Amy's legs. "This'll hurt more if you don't stop moving."

"You're not the one who has to wear this stuff," Amy replied between gritted teeth. Like the best ointments, the 'stuff' stung like nothing else when first applied to open wounds. But Iverson said it healed most skin wounds in a matter of minutes, which was good enough for Kate and Amy – eventually.

"There." Kate finished applying the balm, screwing on the cap. "All done, 'ickle wee baby Pond."

Amy gave her a glare that would have made almost anyone else scarper as fast as they could. As it was, Kate had to force down a laugh.

"I'm going to remember that one the next time you ask me to get anything off the top shelf." Amy had always been a good deal taller than the blonde, but over the last few months the difference had become even greater as her body adapted to suddenly having so many extra organs. Even without heels or boots she stood well over six foot now. Kate, by comparison, was five foot seven at most.

"Yeah, because I've _always_ needed you to do that," Kate retorted sarcastically. She plopped herself down next to the still-indignant Amy, beside the small plain bed where she'd almost bled out several days before. Of course, she'd been unconscious then, and this was her first proper shuttle ride. It didn't impress her. "Can these things do anything other than go in, y'know, straight lines? Like, manuever?"

"These aren't spacecraft," Iverson replied, a wry smile on his face from watching the two women bicker like schoolgirls. "But yes, they have more tricks than they look like from the outside."

"Remind me to try some out later. So what really happened back there at the hospital? 'Cause I was just waiting outside your office while you two talked and next thing I know, there's an arm around my throat and a gun against my head. I'm getting bored of that, you know," she pointed out.

Amy shot a brief glance at Iverson before deciding to go with the simple version. "No idea. We were just having a chat." That the chat was about the fact that Amy had dragged them all into a potentially fatal trap went in the '_she doesn't need to know that_' box for now.

"Right. And so..."

"So some bloke called the Windcatcher is trying to kill us, apparently." She looked over to Iverson to see if he knew more, but the man just shook his head and shrugged.

Kate bit her lip pensively. "So can you find the Doctor now? With your mind powers and all?"

Amy broke her gaze and looked out the window into the clear, pale sky beyond. "Doubt it. Too much noise. Like looking for a needle in a haystack, except the haystack is being tossed around constantly."

Kate frowned. "But you've tried, haven't you?"

"Not yet."

Kate folded her arms and narrowed her eyes at the Time Lady. _**Liar.**_

Amy smiled almost imperceptibly, though she continued to stare out the window. _**So you've figured out how to use this thing, huh?**_

_**How the hell does this even work, anyway? **_Kate thought aloud. **_As far as I can tell I'm still human._**

_**You are. **_Amy paused. She had her suspicions, but nothing concrete yet. **_We'll deal with that later, OK? First I want to make sure that nothing bad comes out of this._**

_**Could it? **_Kate had absolutely no understanding of the intricacies of telepathy and directed consciousness. As far as she was considered, she was just 'thinking loudly'.

Amy, however, did have an understanding, and a deep one at that. _**Yes,**_ she replied simply, **_it could_**. But now was not the time to go into specifics.

If the news disconcerted Kate, she didn't show it. _**Fine. So did you find him?**_

_**No. I was telling the truth.**_

_**No, you weren't. I heard you before. I didn't understand what you were saying, but you were definitely talking to him.**_

_**I was talking at him. I don't think he could hear me, or maybe I just couldn't hear him. Too much noise.**_

_**So then why did you lie? **_

Amy continued to gaze out the window for a few more moments, before giving Iverson another glance. It was all Kate needed to know.

_**You don't trust him?**_

No answer.

_**Amelia?**_

Amy started out at the sky for a few more seconds, before turning around and giving Iverson a warm smile. "So, where are we going?"

If Iverson noticed anything strange during the girls' silent exchange, he didn't show it. "OK, well, since you don't want to go back to the TARDIS until it's fixed, I suppose the plan is to lay low for a while. Whoever this Windcatcher fellow is, he clearly has plenty of men at his beck and call. Beyond that, I'm not sure – neither of you are exactly soldiers, I'm not sure how well you could defend yourself-"

"Then teach us," Amy cut across him. "You might be surprised. You said you were ex-army, yeah? So you could train us up, then we could make a dash for the TARDIS that way. You could do that, right?"

Iverson hadn't considered that. He leaned back in his seat, placing a finger on his lips. "Actually, now that you mention it..."

* * *

><p>"Time travel!"<p>

"Time travel?"

"Yes, time travel. It's amazing, let me tell you. Oh, the things you can see, the places you can go to – there's one instance of eleven galaxies all lined up in perfect synchronisation, you can go to a planet which is nothing but coffee shops – you would like that one for sure – and you can do locum work in Brixton!"

Michael frowned at the Doctor. "Why on earth would you want to locum work?"

"Don't take that tone; it's a lovely practice – short-staffed, unfortunately. By my point is-"

"You had a point?" Michael cut across him with a raised eyebrow. The Doctor pretended he hadn't said anything.

"My point is, I'm a time-traveller and unfortunately my time machine has decided to go on holiday for a moment."

He'd heard of time-travellers before, of course, and he'd heard how they'd gotten stuck here. They'd been appearing on the news sporadically for a couple of years now. He'd never thought he'd actually meet one, thought... assuming that this slightly bonkers man in front of him was indeed telling the truth.

"So you _are _a time-traveller? Got proof?"

The Doctor grinned at him. "Nope. You'll just have to trust me, because I'm the Doctor."

_Trust him?_ That was a bit far. As far as he could tell here was a bloke in decidedly odd clothing who had barged into his workplace, done something strange to the computers than walked off again, rambling about goodness knew what. A madman.

A madman who was possibly a time-traveller.

A madman who had gleaned personal information, deep-seated longings and ever-present stresses on him from mere glances.

A madman was promising something... _more_.

"OK. Fine. So what is this so-called 'adventure' you have planned? Do I need to call sick?"

"Already taken care of," The Doctor told him with a smile. "It's an adventure, so I suggest you pack your bags. I'll help you if you need it."

It sounded tempting, but... "I do have a job to do."

"They won't miss you. Do this, and I promise you, you'll have gained a lot more than you will by telling people where the pharmacy down the road is."

"I don't want to become deadweight, though, if it's dangerous."

"No such thing," the Doctor rebuked with a smile.

_This is stupid. This is dangerous. This is idiotic._ Every instinct, every piece of his mind was telling him to run away, go somewhere else, go somewhere safe and free from harm, but his heart wasn't listening.

"OK. Where are we going first?"

"To meet a friend, then... well, the best part of an adventure is not knowing the destination, isn't it?"

Michael shrugged, honestly having no answer to that. He decided to change the topic to the specifics of the 'adventure'. "So... are we going to fix your time machine? Or are we going to find this girl you keep mentioning?"

The Doctor was taken aback. "What? No – I -"

"OK, no, you _don't_ keep mentioning her, but you keep thinking about her," Michael corrected himself with a wry smile. "Like, before, you were looking at the database, but that database only has names, so that means you think she's in a hospital somewhere but you don't know which one. Then when you didn't find her there, you said you were looking for someone special, but didn't want to mention her name. So that means that she's so special that you don't want to tell anyone about her and put her in danger. And she is in danger, otherwise you wouldn't look so edgy. See, Doctor," he concluded, "I can work things out too."

The Doctor stared at him for a second, utterly taken aback, before breaking into a broad grin and letting out a booming laugh. "See? Told you that you wouldn't be deadweight!"

He had to return the smile, feeling a warm, satisfied glow within himself. _Not so useless after all._ But he still had a question he wanted answered.

"So are we looking for her, then? What is she like?"

The smile on the Doctor's face faded slightly, becoming distant, wistful, as if borne from a thousand unforgettable instances of both unbounded joy and crippling pain.

"She's... she's..." He sighed, struggling to find words to describe Amelia Pond. "She's my wildest dream made flesh, and my worst nightmare come true."

* * *

><p>It was night when they arrived at an elegant homestead at the base of a mountain. Rolling, mist-darkened hills filled the landscape before them, merging seamlessly into the twinkling stars above – fake though they were.<p>

"Nice place," Kate commented as she clambered out of the shuttle.

"It is, but that's not why I chose it. It's well out of the way – no one ever comes near here. Off the books too – a family favour." He breathed in the fresh, cold air. "Shame that no one else can come here, but I suppose when your entire world is a paradise, you're bound to miss a little pocket of perfection here and there."

"They won't find us here, will they?" Amy asked, loitering inside, seemingly cautious about something. "What sort of... telepathic stuff have they got out here?"

"Nothing. Even the equaliser field doesn't work out here, it's one of many small enclaves scattered throughout Earthsphere – good thing, too," he added. "Though that means you'll have to make tea the old way, I'm afraid. No more of just thinking and having a machine spit it out."

"So there's no way they could track me by my thoughts?"

"Not that I can think of." He leaned back against the shuttle and frowned at her. "You're the expert, Amy. Do you think it's safe? I can take you back to the TARDIS if you want."

"No," Amy replied firmly, stepping out. "They know I'm around, and the TARDIS is dead at the moment. We'd last about five minutes back there."

"If you say so."

"I do say so. So you said you were gonna train us – how?"

He clicked his fingers and pointed at the house. "Come inside and you'll see."

Inside, they found a neat, well-furnished and impressively large house in a style not too dissimilar to what they'd find back on Earth, in their own time period. Interior design, they supposed, transcended time itself. But it certainly didn't look like a place where they could practice sword- or gun-play.

Iverson came back, wearing a silver half-ring on his head with a small green light on the side. He was holding two similar headsets, one also silver, the other gold. He handed the silver one to Kate and the gold one to Amy.

"What are these?" Amy asked, peering cautiously at the headset – there was nothing obviously unusual there as far as she could see, but she was aware that didn't mean much.

"It'll be easiest to show you. Go on, put them on. Don't worry, it isn't dangerous."

Both girls hesitated for a moment before placing the headsets on their heads, the ring resting on their ears and going around the back of their heads. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the light on Amy's headset blinked on, followed soon afterwards by Kate's and Iverson's.

Then the world dissolved around them.

* * *

><p>Amy opened her eyes to see a field of green covering the right side of her vision, soft grass brushing her cheek.<p>

She sat up. Above her was an ivy-covered two story house, the windows closed and uninviting. The grass had grown long around her, and the steel swing on her right had the sad look of having not been touched in years.

_My... my old house? In Leadworth?_

"Okay," she heard a crisp, Midlands-accented voice behind her. She turned to find Kate standing up, brushing leaves off her front. "Someone explain to me what just happened, because I am _so_ lost right now. I could have sworn I was just in Iverson's house, not back home in Leadworth."

"Sorry," Iverson called out, some distance away. "As I said, easier to show you than explain."

"Well, the showing hasn't worked, so you best get onto the explaining."

"The helmet is an advanced perception filter. This isn't a dream, although it behaves like one – you're still fully conscious, it's just that all your senses have been completely fooled by the filter. For all intents and purposes, you're here in... where are we, Amy?"

"Leadworth, England," Kate declared. "Back on Earth."

"How'd you know that?"

"Amy and I grew up here – we know the place like the back of our hand."

Amy remained silent, contemplating something. _Perception filter..._ "So," she began, "This _isn't_ a dream? You two aren't fooling around inside my head?"

"No, more a shared virtual reality. Why?" Iverson couldn't help but be curious. "Not a fan of people poking around your brain?"

"None of your business," Amy shot back. "OK. So this is a... a shared virtual reality. That's fine, but how is this a training ground?"

"Well, that's the thing – it's _virtual_. You can simulate anything you like in here, including a battle. But since it's virtual, you can die without, well, actually dying. Rather useful."

"But why Leadworth? Why... my house?"

"It defaults to the place you're most familiar with. You're the controller of this scenario, Amy. You decide where we are, who exists here, what the rules are."

"So if I want us to be in the TARDIS-"

And they were. Right in the middle of the console room, the time rotor whirring merrily as it always did.

"Wow. Now that's cool," Kate declared, impressed by the instant change in their apparent location. Amy, however, was thinking.

"So do I just control the location, or-"

"You control everything," Iverson replied. "If you want a cupcake, think it and it'll appear. If you want to turn off gravity, think it and we'll float into the air – but don't do that now," he added quickly, "In fact, leave the physics normal until we're ready. But that's not all – you control the passage of time, too, in terms of how much time in the real world passes for every second that passes here. No need to play with that, though, since we won't notice it while we're here."

"How fast will it go, then? Is it like an _Inception_ like thing, where a few minutes pass for every hour in the real world?"

He didn't understand the reference, but the question was obvious enough. "No one's mind is _that_ strong, not even yours. But I'd imagine that time would pass at several times faster than normal in here. So a few seconds here is one second back in reality. We can spend a lot of time here and not miss too much."

This was all well and good, but... "Why me? Why not you?"

"Your mind is the special one, Amy. The scenarios you create will be far more detailed than anything I can create – in fact, you'll struggle to tell the difference between this and the real world. That is, until you start playing with the physics," he grumbled, as Amy had decided to start playing with the gravity, causing the three to float up towards the roof. She chuckled, and righted everyone again.

"OK. So how do we leave if we want to?"

"Just say 'I want to leave' in your head and the filter will deactivate. If one of us does it, it'll just be us that leaves, but for you it'll obviously shut down the whole scenario."

"Right. Let's get cracking, then."

Iverson raised his eyebrows. "I'd have thought you'd want to rest, it's getting quite-"

"I don't sleep. Although you can go if you want to, Kate."

The blonde narrowed her eyes. "Hell, no. I want a piece of this party."

Iverson shook his head. "Well, then, I guess we better get started..."

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<strong>


	33. His Wildest Dream Made Flesh

**All Amy and Kate this chapter, and _intense__ly_ character-focussed. We'll start to see the less pleasant side of Amy here.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 33. His Wildest Dream Made Flesh: 1 April 2011<strong>

The girls quickly settled into a routine. Dawn, breakfast, sword-fighting, lunch, practising with guns and crossbows, dinner, learning the layout of the forest, sleep. After a few days she'd had to get Amy to pare the flow of time in the scenarios back to normal speed, because her mind simply couldn't take fifteen hour sessions at once, even if it was only three or four hours for her body.

"There are _two _of us who are still human here, remember?" She reminded the Time Lady grumpily after one particularly taxing session involving swords. She didn't ever throw in the towel and leave, though. That, she decided, would have been pitifully weak, and she was determined to match Amy toe to toe whenever she could.

Still, she enjoyed the sessions. Even though it was completely fake, she still loved that exhilarating adrenaline rush that she'd felt that evening in the forest, now replicated daily. A niggling voice in the back of her head told her the Doctor almost certainly wouldn't have approved, but what he didn't know couldn't hurt him, could it?

She mostly concentrated on sharpshooting. She'd done some clay pigeon shooting with her dad several times, so it wasn't entirely new. She had a very steady hand and, for a human, fine reflexes. She could even outdo Amy on the range – although she suspected Amy wasn't really trying. The Time Lady instead chose to expend her energy on swordplay. In between, both girls had decided to take up fencing as downtime. Kate couldn't possibly hope to match Amy's lightning reflexes or explosive strength, but Amy did at least try to make it fair for her. So that was fun. Beyond that, however, Katherine chose to hone her marksmanship, and Amy simply focused on her mastery of the sword.

And boy did she have that.

It was wondrous but also kind of scary to watch, really. Kate now knew her as a sharp-tongued and introverted but otherwise quite sweet and good-natured girl, but put a sword in her hand and she became the embodiment of a mythological warrior-heroine. The image of Amy moving like a heavenly wind, twirling so quickly her hair became a blurred beacon of flame, leaving waves of defeated virtual assailants in her wake with powerful slices so swift Kate hadn't even seen them...

Scary was definitely the word.

At times Kate wondered if Amy was putting too _much_ of herself into her swordplay, into the parry, thrust and dodge. Parts of herself that other people hadn't seen before. Parts that other people wouldn't _want_ to see. It became an especially pressing question when Amy started carrying a sword in real life. It was a beautiful weapon – curved, gleaming, intricate inscriptions on the hilt – but it was a _sword, _for goodness' sake. Amy started practising with it in real life too; that got very annoying after a while.

"You realise that if we get cut in the real world, we can't just cheat and insta-heal, yeah?" Kate reminded her after Amy had only narrowly missed slicing her in half by accident. Again.

_Yeah, definitely a bit too much of her is going into that._

Amy was drinking too. A lot. With two advanced livers, it took a lot of alcohol to have any effect on her at all, and it was hard for Kate to tell the difference between normal and drunk Amy. But those wine bottles she'd found scattered near the bin hadn't emptied themselves, had they? She'd even found a number hidden in the shuttle, presumably so Amy still had a store if they needed to make a quick getaway. She wasn't sure if Iverson would have approved, and much less sure if he knew about it at all – Amy had been quite careful, and it was only by borrowing her sonic to look for the stuff she'd left aboard that Kate had found her secret stash. She decided not to tell Iverson, but it did worry her a little just how much Amy was drinking – though only after pinching a bottle of her own.

Nonetheless, she wondered what it said about her friend.

Such deep philosophical and psychological questions were currently beyond her reckoning, however. _Maybe for when I can get some sleep._

That had been a problem ever since the "incident" last week when she'd had that bizarre vision. Not that she wasn't _trying_ – but she would lie down, nod off within minutes... then one of _those dreams_ would start, and soon she'd be awake and sweating, pulse racing and feeling totally unrested. After an hour or so, she'd fall asleep again and the process would repeat. They weren't even nightmares. Some of them were unpleasant, granted, but many weren't, and many were just... weird. Pointless, even. What they _all_ had in common, however, and what she was starkly aware of, was that none of them were _her_ dreams.

They were Amy's. All of them, taken straight out of Amy's memories through the mindlink. Hell, she'd even seen _herself_ in a few of them – never a comfortable experience, as she was reminded once again of the person she'd used to be.

To say this freaked her out was a colossal understatement.

She knew Amy wasn't fully aware of how much of her own mind was leaking through the mindlink, given the way she looked at her, companionable concern in her eyes as she asked if she needed any help.

"Nah, I'm fine," she lied, knowing that it would be deeply unfair to give Amy her burdens too.

She knew only one person could properly explain what had happened, what this meant for her. So she devoted herself whole-heartedly to training and learning, knowing it'd be the only way to find him.

But she wished she could get some sleep.

* * *

><p><em>She races up the stairs so quickly she trips at the top. Tears fill her eyes and spill down her cheeks, half-blinding her as she staggers into the room, slamming the door shut behind her.<em>

_The psychiatrists and therapists had tried being nice. They'd tried being calm, and understanding. That hadn't worked, so this one had tried anger and aggression instead._

_But he found that his patient had her own store of those things already, and she was not afraid to use it._

_He'd yelled a storm, clutching his neck where a bright bite mark had begun to form and left without another word. A minute's stunned silence and Amelia had bolted, trying to bottle her fury before she turned on Aunt Sharon by accident._

_Don't they understand?_

_She is not stupid._

_She is not delusional._

_And she is NOT mad._

_She'd seen him. When she was seven. Had supper with him. Picked up the pieces of the plate he'd thrown out the door the morning after and cleaned up the mess he'd left. Did they think the bowl of custard had emptied itself?_

_But eight years later they still challenged her, questioned the integrity of her mind._

_She can't stand it. She won't._

_She slides down the back of the door, her harsh, uneven breaths the only noise in the room. She looks across and sees the little replica she's made, the wooden blue box. She sighs, leans her head back on the door and closes her eyes._

_Why hasn't he come back? _

_Has the one exception to her lifelong rule been the exception that proved it? Has she made the one mistake that she'd promised herself as a child she would never, ever make?_

_What if... what if they're right about her after all?_

* * *

><p>Kate woke and tried to stand up so quickly she smashed her head on a cabinet beside her bed.<p>

Stars swirling in her eyes and swearing so viciously that even the most hardened street urchin would blanch, she staggered out of her bedroom, clutching at the angry welt forming on the side of her head.

_Smooth, Katherine Broad. Real smooth._

She limped haphazardly into the bathroom, turned the taps on full and splashed her face with the icy water. She looked at herself in the mirror – her pale, once-pretty face was drawn and haggard, her vibrant blonde tresses hanging sadly in random, frayed clumps and her hazel eyes dull. _This is what a week without any sleep does to you_, she realised.

She'd learned to accept the dreams that were coming her way. They still woke her up, of course, and left her covered in a sheen of cold sweat. But resourceful as she was, she'd learnt to use the dreams to discover more about her friend.

Not that there was much to discover from most of them – she'd already seen quite a lot of the less flattering sides of Amy's personality in Leadworth, as it had often been directed her way. But now she was starting to gather a picture of what it was like on the other side of the coin, waiting for the Doctor all those years.

_It must have been – no, it was – horrible. With or without the people like me. Being promised all of time and space and then having it dangled out of your reach like that..._

Worse still, she'd finally found out what had snapped Amy so profoundly that she had changed her name, the reason she'd been in a coma for two weeks.

_He's not coming back._ Well, whatever that place was, it had certainly been convincing. To spend two weeks in _there..._

She sighed. It wasn't a nice place, the psyche of Amy Pond; she'd rather be elsewhere right now. She washed her face again and left the bathroom. From experience, she knew that sleep wouldn't come for a few more hours. An idea suddenly struck her.

_Maybe Amy's awake too, I'll go have a chat to her. Better than staring at the ceiling all night._

She headed downstairs and found the Time Lady lying peacefully on the couch, wearing the golden headset. She looked asleep, but Kate knew she wasn't – her mind was simply elsewhere.

"Hey." There was no response. She hadn't expected one. She tapped her lightly on the shoulder, and got nothing in return.

_What's she doing in there?_ There was no way she was training at this godawful hour, so why would she have immersed herself in a virtual reality?

She bit her lip, moving her gaze across to one of the headsets lying on a table.

_Only one way to find out._

* * *

><p>"Bawoo!"<p>

"Ba-what?" But the Doctor's head had already disappeared above the console floor. Amy Pond rolled her eyes and raced upwards, taking the steps two at the time.

"Krylos!" He cried out, dancing around the console in dizzying circles.

"That where we're going today?" Amy asked, watching the Time Lord dance about, flicking levers this way and that.

"Largest collection of crystals in the known universe. Huge forest of perfect, gleaming purple amethyst crystals! Simply breathtaking – very rare that I bring anyone here." He gave her a dazzling smile and pulled the flight lever, landing the TARDIS with a lurch. "But for you, Amy Pond, I shall make an exception."

She laughed, filled with the joy of yet another scarcely believable destination waiting beyond the doors. "Well, then lead on, raggedy man." She took her best friend's hand and skipped out the doors with him, slamming them shut behind them.

Above, on the top of the staircase, another Amy sat. Silent tears had poured down her cheeks as she watched the scene unfold... but she was alone here, so there was nothing stopping her crying.

Or so she thought.

"So I thought I'd gone mad for a second, seeing two of you here."

She started, almost jumping off the stair, turning to find Katherine Broad seated right next to her.

"Kate! What the hell are you doing here? Why-?"

"Couldn't sleep, and I saw you using the headset alone. I don't want to be missing any parties, as I said. So what happened there," she nodded down at the now-abandoned console. "Was that a memory of some kind?"

"Yeah." Amy wiped her cheeks clean, but it was pointless – Kate would have seen her crying.

"Sad one, huh? Was this one of those I-miss-the-Doctor memories?"

"Sort of, but I've got plenty of those. This one's special."

"How so? Looked to me as if you were just going to some planet, nothing particularly special about that."

"It's my last memory as a human. The start of it is, anyway."

Neither Amy nor the Doctor had ever talked about the event which had changed the redhead so drastically, although the Doctor had certainly outlined the mechanics of the transformation to her as a cautionary tale. "Oh."

"Yeah." Amy closed her eyes, and at once the Time Rotor gyrated up and down at a fiendish pace, as if the world had suddenly been placed on fast forward. "Watch."

The world slowed to normal speed, and almost immediately the doors burst open. In strode a very harrowed-looking Doctor, cradling an unconscious Amy Pond in his arms. Blood surrounded a ripped hole in her skirt, and golden mist poured out of her half-open mouth.

"There's me as a Time Lady," the conscious, 'real' Amy commented as the Doctor sprinted downstairs towards the medical bay.

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"How'd it happen? Was it just like a freak accident, or-"

"Has the Doctor talked to you about this?" Amy cut across her harshly.

"A bit. Said it was his fault, told me how not to repeat it."

"He's an idiot. He blames himself for everything. This was _my_ stupid mistake. _My_ fault. And now I'm wearing it for the rest of eternity – what a wonderful life, huh?"

Amy's sarcasm wasn't lost on Kate. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

"Maybe it is. Maybe I want a normal life again, be able to grow old, get a day job and die of old age. Like a normal person. Like _you._"

Kate stared at her. "You don't mean that. You can't. You've got the Doctor – and all of time and space as your feet. How many people would give their life to just experience one day of what you view as your daily life?"

Amy sighed. "You're right. You're absolutely right. I wouldn't trade this for the universe. And there are so many people out there who might need me one day, but... y'know. It's not all fun and games, being like this."

"I never said it was." Kate patted her consolingly on the knee. Amy didn't so much as twitch. "But at least the talking will help."

"Talking." Amy echoed the word after a long silence, as if sounding it out. "I've been doing a fair bit of that lately, haven't I?"'

"Not like there's been a lot else to do," Kate pointed out.

"Fair point. It's not my style, though."

"I know it's not. Girl like you wouldn't have as many secrets as you do otherwise."

Amy's eyes narrowed. "I don't know what you're talking about," she replied evenly, her tone chilled.

"Sure you don't. So I guess that means you've told him all about the diary." Kate was now seriously pushing her luck, but recklessness had always been a driving quality in her.

"He knows about the diary, he bought it for me," Amy replied off-handedly.

"I meant the black diary. The one you kept at school."

Amy froze. "How the _hell_ do you know about that?!"

"Does it matter?"

"Do _not_ play games with me, Katherine Broad. _Have you read that diary?"_

Kate swallowed, recognising that Amy was a bee's sting away from flying off the handle. "No."

"Then how the bloody hell do you know what that diary is for? _Tell me!_"

"Alright. You want the truth?"

"The whole truth and nothing_but_ the truth."

"OK. The truth is that a few days ago, while you were asleep, I had a look at that black thing you made. And then suddenly... I had this weird vision, if that's the right word. Of you, in Leadworth, while growing up." She could see Amy's knuckles going white as her fists tightened on thin air, but there was no point in stopping now. "And – well, in that, I saw you. It was almost like a dream. And since then I've had heaps of dreams, all involving you in some way, from life in Leadworth."

"Whose dreams?" Amy's voice had thinned to a dangerously even whisper.

"Well - _your_ dreams. Almost as if... almost as if I was-"

"-inside my head?" Amy's voice rose slightly with every syllable, her control wavering.

"Well – well yes."

"Have you seen the white place? Have you found out what happened to me when I was fifteen?" Amy was standing in front of her now, eyes lethally bright, incandescent with scarcely controlled rage.

Kate's stomach fell out from beneath her. _Uh oh._ "Amelia..."

"_HAVE YOU?!"_

She nodded.

Kate had no idea how to describe the sound that Amy made next. It was a mix between an anguished cry, a furious scream and a guttural roar of rage. Not that she had any time to describe, because she'd suddenly found herself pinned to the wall with such violence that her vision swam, a hot liquid trickling through her blonde tresses.

When the mist in her eyes cleared, she found Amy's face mere inches from hers, the Time Lady's hot breath on her face, eyes burning so brightly Kate feared they were about to burn a hole in her skull. A cold, sharp object bit against her exposed neck – out of nowhere, Amy had conjured a curved sword and was pressing it firm against her jugular. Any harder and her skin would pierce, and she'd bleed out on the floor of the TARDIS.

"Now you listen to me now, Broad, and you listen good." Amy breathed, her voice ragged, every word laced with anger beyond reckoning. "That _thing_ you touched is an external memory storage. _My_ external memory storage. Part of _me_ lives in that thing. Touch it again and I swear to you, the next time you feel this sword against your throat, it'll be the real one. _Got it?_"

Kate couldn't nod her head quickly enough. "G-got it."

"Then get the _hell_ out of here. _Run._"

She didn't need telling twice.

With a thought, she had left the virtual world, left Amy, and was back in the comforting night, Amy still lying peacefully next to her with the golden headset on. She tore off her own, tossing it away from her as quick as she could, stumbling back towards her room. Though the path was clear and simple, she couldn't see it, barging into doorways and walls at random.

All she could see was the dreadful rage on Amelia Pond's face as the Time Lady told her to run.

* * *

><p>The console room of the TARDIS was silent once more, save for the whirring of the Time Rotor and the heavy, laboured breathing of the Time Lady.<p>

The sword lay embedded in the wall where she'd hurled it in her anger. Fury like raw lava coursed through her veins, uncontrollable and dangerous... so dangerous. It was a damn good thing she was in a virtual world, because frankly she wasn't responsible for her actions right now. She wasn't entirely sure _what_ had made her go off like so, but all she knew was that she was best left alone right now.

Alone.

_Alone._

Her breathing slowed, the fire in her blood freezing, leaving her cold... and empty.

She'd done it again. For the second time in her life, a friend – not jut someone she was friendly with, but a genuine _friend, _someone who knew her as she really was, who respected her and was honest with her – had come up to her offering only aid, and in return, what had she done?

_I put a goddamn sword to her throat, that's what._

She closed her eyes, still seeing the _fear_ in Kate's eyes, feeling her anger spike again. Just like last time, she wasn't angry at anyone else. Just like last time, her contempt was reserved for herself, and herself alone.

Once again, she was reminded of who she truly hated most of all.

But through it all, she was Amelia Pond. No one beat her, no one broke her. Not again. She would _not_ let this rarest of opportunities pass. It might already be too late, but she had to at least try. _She deserves that at least._

She opened her mouth, her words an inaudible whisper.

"I want to leave."

* * *

><p>Kate lay in her bed, shivering. It wasn't cold in the slightest but still she was wrapped up deep in layer upon layer of sheet and blanket, screwing her eyes up, hoping that with lack of sight would come lack of memory.<p>

It didn't.

She still saw the light, terrible and fierce, that had shone from Amy's eyes. Still heard the deadly hiss of her voice. Still felt the cold metal against her bare skin. She'd had absolutely no hesitation in running away when Amy had told her to.

She'd seen this anger before, of course. Amy _had_ put her in hospital once. But that was a freak accident in many ways, an unlucky blow to her temple. She hadn't ever seen _this._ The lethal intent. Amy had been just a twitch of her fingers away from slitting her throat, even if it wasn't actually real. She wondered which was truly the greater danger to her – the mysterious Windcatcher chasing the Time Lady or his target.

Fear and exhaustion finally got the better of her and she sunk into a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep. She was so far under that she didn't notice a soft knocking on the door about ten minutes later.

"Katherine?" Amy's voice was gentle, warm, a world away from the withering rage of mere minutes earlier. "You in there?"

No response – Kate was very much asleep, but Amy didn't notice.

"Not talking, huh?" A slow, melancholy chuckle. "Fair enough. I'm coming in, OK? Just to talk."

A click of the door and the slender form of Amy crept into the darkened room, learning on the door-frame. She looked for all the world like a sad, sorry young twenty-two year old girl. Not a ruthless and powerful time-traveller.

"So..." Her mind was still far too clouded for her to realise that Kate was fast asleep, far too worn out by the day to listen to her.

"The silent treatment, huh? I can't blame you. I don't really know what... OK. OK." Amy paused for a moment, collecting herself. When she spoke again, her voice was barely above a whisper, bereft of the fire that usually filled her Scottish lilt. "I know you won't believe me when I say this. Not after what I just said, after... after what I did. And you shouldn't. I know you shouldn't. You should hate me now, want to get as far away from me as you possibly can. I won't stop you... but I just want you to wait a minute and listen and I'm gabbbling again, aren't I?"

_Yes,_ a voice in her head told her._ Yes, you are._

"I'll get to the point. Everything you said to me, everything you did as a kid – I want you to forget it, alright? Because... because you're forgiven. Completely forgiven. And I know I don't have any right to ask you anything any more, but – but I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry..." She stopped, leaving nothing but silence. Waiting for an answer that never came.

"Alright. I'll leave you alone now. It's the least I can do... I'll be outside if you need me, OK?" She pushed herself off the door frame and left the room, closing the door with a click. She rested her head on the closed door, tears squeezing between closed eyelids as she felt silence fill her once more.

_Alone._

* * *

><p><strong>I think I am actually insane, because while I was waiting for a few proofreads to come back, I had (what I think was) a brilliant idea for a plot arc set <strong>**_way_**** in the future. Like, decades beyond this current plot. But what started out as a post-sequel idea very quickly became a full-blown plot and hey presto, before I knew it I had 5+ chapters of material written down and a whole lot more mapped out in my head (I write fast when I want to). It'd be a shame to let it go to waste, but if I keep up my current uploading pace it'd probably take me a good year or two to get round to it. Thoughts, anyone?**

**Please review.  
><strong>


	34. Morning on Earthsphere

**If this looks oddly familiar, it's because I've done a total restructure of chapters 30-34, which have now become chapters 30-39. More on that somewhat later. If you'd read up to the "old" Chapter 33 (the last of the very long ones), then feel free to skip straight through to Chapter 38 to pick up where you left off.  
><strong>

**You may want to read this and the next one several times. There is a **_**lot **_**packed into these two – hints about the nature of Earthsphere, hints about who Stanley and Iverson are, a lot of stuff about the repticore... and above all, one key revelation about Amelia Pond which drastically changes the context in which many of her actions should be viewed, especially from now on.**

**Similar sort of chapter but with more plot. Aware this is risky, so please leave a review if you have questions as to where I'm taking Amy or my rationale for doing so (I do have one).**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 34. Morning on Earthsphere: 1 April 2011<br>**

The noise was barely audible, but even so it woke Iverson in a fraction of a second. Instinctively, he stood and grabbed a nightrobe off a hook, heading for the source of the sobbing. It was muffled and uneven – either someone didn't want to be heard crying or they were sobbing into a chair.

Or, as it turned out, both.

Amy was asleep, as would be sensible at this time of night – but this still registered as a first for him. He'd never seen the Time Lady sleeping before, but it was clear that unconsciousness didn't bring her comfort.

She was curled in the sofa, her ginger locks cascading across her cheek and down the seat, her arms drawn protectively in her chest. She tossed and turned in her sleep, muttering in some unintelligible language as tear after tear flowed squeezed from closed eyelids. Looking at her, no one could have guessed that she was a being of immense power and ability and not just an ordinary young girl going through a very, _very_ tough little period in life.

"Amy?" He tried shaking her awake, but she whimpered and curled even tighter, digging herself into the sofa. She was dead to the world until a time of her choosing. After a few minutes, she seemed to calm slightly, the muttering ceased and the tears dried up. Iverson continued to stand over her, watching. Even in this dishevelled, vulnerable state, she was breathtaking, her slender figure rising up and down with her breaths, her hair a fan of brilliant flame on the sofa seat.

_How can someone so strong, so beautiful, be so broken inside?_

He shook his head sadly – whatever it was, there wasn't much he could do to help her. Amy shuddered again. Clearly, the demons of her dreams had not left permanently. He went back to his room and returned to her with a spare blanket, draping it gently over her slender frame before going back to bed.

* * *

><p>The Windcatcher didn't like failure, and neither did his employers, evidently.<p>

They weren't angry. Not really. Just the dignified, blank disappointment that characterised those with far more power than mere mortals could dream of. And he wasn't even one of those. They had mused aloud whether he was equipped to carry out the contract, a suggestion which made his fingers quiver with silent rage, though he kept his voice level as he gently inquired as to who could do a better job.

After all, he was only doing this because he _had_ to. He didn't enjoy chasing Time Lords – not least because it was exceptionally difficult – but it was his job. He was a professional and would remain so.

He didn't enjoy killing people either. Not unless he had to. After all, didn't he _tell_ that idiot not to say his name? What, did he think he was just a bit embarrassed by it and people would point and laugh in his face? Sure, he was marked for death anyway, the mercs the Windcatcher hired invariably were as they were far too dangerous when left to their own devices, but he'd have bought himself another half-hour otherwise. So no, he didn't appreciate jibes about his body count either, especially given his target.

But he'd made his point. The contract was the contract and he would either fulfil it or pay the penalty. He had no intention of doing the latter.

He strolled down a street of one of Earthsphere's many cities, making no attempt to hide himself and yet completely invisible because of it. It was a truly beautiful place, Earthsphere, a paradise in every sense of the word – clean, peaceful, prosperous. _If only they knew its greater purpose._

Well, he knew. And he had access to the Earthsphere blueprints, more to the point. Which meant he knew that it was almost certain that the Time Lady had fled with her friend to one of many enclaves where the equaliser field was more or less absent, and hence beyond its tracking capabilities.

Ordinarily, he would have simply sent men to the ones he felt most likely and done a sweep there, but there were problems aplenty with that – for one, there were far too many enclaves for it to be even remotely likely that he'd pick the right one by chance. Two, he could send an entire army of mercenaries against her and it would probably bear no fruit, especially if her boyfriend got involved (as he almost certainly would if the Windcatcher tried a stunt like that). Three, he needed to be close by for this, so he could pin her down. The risk was that if he played his hand too early, the Time Lady would flee to the TARDIS before he was ready for them to do so.

No. He had to know _precisely_ where they were. He'd already tried leading his off-suit cards before to catch her off guard, and had been unexpectedly trumped as a result. Another mistake and he'd lose... and he _never_ lost.

He headed to the middle of a park, standing in cool shade, far from any eavesdroppers, and sent his message.

_Showtime._

* * *

><p>The next morning, he found her leaning over the edge of the upstairs balcony, staring at the multi-coloured hue of the blood-red, dark-blue sky as the sun made its first appearance for the day. The air was brisk, but pleasant – like a splash of cool water in the morning. Against the backdrop of the rapidly brightening sky, she was a picture of dignified, restrained power, with her bright coppery-ginger hair cascading over her leather flying jacket and the sword still attached to her belt. She didn't move or make any acknowledgement of his presence as he walked up to her.<p>

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Iverson asked gently. Amy continued to stare into the distance, her face impassive, her vibrant green eyes lost in thought.

"It reminds me of home," she eventually replied in a quiet voice.

"The skydome was designed to replicate Earth's, you know, along with the rest of the landscape. Old Earth – before its atmosphere was too heavily polluted to see sunrises like these."

"That would explain the name, then."

"Yes. Earth is seen by many of the peoples here as a faraway paradise, a distant utopia only now accessible in far-off fairytales and stories. For billions, this is the closest they will ever come to seeing the human homeworld," he said with a hint of scoff.

Amy must have picked it up, because she frowned and turned her head to look at him. "You don't sound especially convinced."

He smiled and turned to stare out at the rolling, verdant-green hills, the snow-capped peaks to the side, the rays of dazzling sunlight banishing the last of the night. "The thing that all utopias have in common, Miss Pond, is that they don't exist."

She frowned at him. "Earth does. It's my _home_."

"Oh, I didn't say Earth didn't _exist_. But ask yourself – would you call it a utopia? You've had the benefit of actually living there, something only the privileged few with access to time travel have the possibility of experiencing. And no one here has grown up there."

She opened her mouth to reply _yes_, but something stopped her. Memories of vague news reports she hadn't paid much attention to, brief soundbites on TV. _Famine in Africa. War in the Middle East. Hunger. Disease. Death._

"Guess not."

"Indeed." He shifted, leaning on the fence with his elbow so he could face her properly. "How are you holding up, Amy?"

"Fine," she replied off-hand. "I miss him, but I'll live." She didn't need to specify what she meant by 'him'.

He knew that was a lie. He'd _seen_ that that was a lie. There was a shadow around her eyes and thin streaks of makeup around her cheeks. She hadn't just spent a few moments crying as he'd seen – she'd spent most of the night in tears. But she seemed better now, so he decided not to press the subject... too much.

"You're up early. Most girls your age wouldn't be up for hours."

"Most girls my age aren't Time Ladies. I don't sleep much now."

"That's true."

"Of course it is." She glanced across at him curiously. "And you? Why are you up at this sort of hour?"

He chuckled. "Amy, I'm ex-military. We had to get up at five in the morning and go on a ten mile run every day."

"Remind me never to join. That doesn't explain why you're doing this now, though."

"Who said I didn't enjoy it? I'm about to go for a dash up the mountain for a few hours."

They both shared a laugh at that, the sound rippling through the air like the sound of a waterfall cascading into a clear, pristine pool. Unusually, Amy was the first one to return to seriousness.

"You sound like you've seen a lot. Like, you're more cynical about this place than anyone else I've talked to."

"One doesn't necessarily lead to the other, Amy," he reminded her. Now that she thought about it, he was right – and she knew the perfect example of someone for whom the opposite was true. "But yes, I have. Too much."

"We all have," Amy replied quietly.

He gazed at her, a crease between his eyebrows and curiosity sparkling in his eyes. Who was this girl, really? Lonely, vulnerable youth or the immensely gifted alien – which of them was the true Amy Pond? Or was it both?

_Too difficult. Talk about something else._

"My brother would have loved to meet you, you know. He idolised your kind, studied them deeply – and especially your Doctor. He was always an idealistic chap," Iverson added, with a hint of disdain in his voice.

"I hope he meets him. They'd get along swimmingly. Me – not so sure."

"A long time ago, he told me that there are only two types of people with power – those who want it, and those who don't. Those who want it are destined to misuse it. Those who don't will be the ones others look up to. I get the feeling the two of you are in the latter."

"I certainly didn't ask for this," Amy agreed, while not entirely agreeing.

"I can imagine. I must admit, I would love to meet the Doctor one day as well. See what drives him, what motivates him, try to understand him."

"Do you think you could?"

"I could try. From what I've heard, he's seen a lot of the devil in his life. Many of us have, he's not alone in that respect."

She shook her head. "No. When I first started travelling with him, when I was human, I thought I understood him as well. I thought it was just that he'd seen the devil and had been scarred by it – having to wipe out the rest of his species and all."

"And you were wrong?"

"No. I was right. I usually am," she added with a smile, "but I was wrong about what the devil he'd seen actually was."

He paused before continuing, not entirely sure whether he wanted to know the answer to his next question.

"Have you looked into the eyes of the devil, Amy Pond?"

"Yes," she replied simply, with a definite finality to her tone. "I have."

She didn't say what she'd seen.

* * *

><p>Late afternoon, and the dreariness of city planning was starting to wear on Stanley Blood. He didn't exactly regret it, not at all, but designing a municipal pool was not enlightening work at the best of times. And now was not the best of times – for the first time in goodness' knew how long, crime and violence had come to Earthsphere, shattering the peace he had strove to create, the peace he thought was unbreakable.<p>

_A hospital attacked. Three dead, ten injured, a hell of a lot of people scared out of their wits._ That the three dead were two of the assailants and a patient with a chronic heart condition who had had a heart attack didn't quite matter. People had _died_. On _his_ watch. It just seemed so... senseless. Why attack a working hospital? What good would that do?

To make matters worse, it had been the hospital run by _his_ brother. Sure, they'd not spoken in years but Iverson was still his brother.

But it wasn't his place to interfere. He wasn't a ruler, just a planner. He had built Earthsphere, but he didn't control it. No one did. This place was beyond control.

What he was hoping for, then, was a distraction.

"Stanley! Hello!"

He looked up and saw one. "Doctor. Where the devil have you been?" The Time Lord was flanked by a rather apprehensive looking young man, who rather looked as if he was having second thoughts about the whole affair. They were in such a rush that they almost knocked over one of the technicians, who was busy working on one of the data feeds on the wall.

They'd first gone to the hospital from which Amy had fled, to see if there were any clues. But apart from confirmation that she'd been there with Kate, there was nothing of use there at all. So the Doctor had decided to drop in on a friend.

"Up and around. Sorry to hear about the hospital, by the way, but maybe I can help you find the culprit."

That got his attention. He stood up, swimming pool plans forgotten. Just because he wasn't _supposed_ to help protect his own world didn't mean he wouldn't when the opportunity arose. And this was definitely an opportunity. "Do you have any names?"

"Not quite," the Doctor lied, preferring not to divulge that piece of information to Stanley yet. "But I do have an idea. First though, I need some information."

"On what?"

"The equaliser field."

He frowned. "What about it?"

"It detected me straight away, I'm aware of that. But has it detected anyone else?"

"An equaliser field isn't designed to-"

"It does. Or, at least, this one does. How else did you spot my psychic signature? Wasn't exactly advertising."

"If you say so."

"Hang on," Michael interjected, not liking his own lack of understanding. "This equaliser field – you're talking about power, right? Thought to electricity. That kind of stuff, the stuff we learn in college."

"That's the idea. But if someone were to piggyback a monitor, or detector of some kind..."

"What, you're saying that you could trace really strong psychics by their thoughts, because it'd cause a power surge? That what you're saying?"

The Doctor was impressed. "Not bad, Mikey. Not bad at all." He turned back to Stanley. "So have you seen anything else strange over the past few days?"

Stanley pursed his lips pensively. "As a matter of fact, I have." He closed the swimming pool plans on the giant table-screen before him and keyed in a password on number-pad, bringing up a long multi-entry list of numbers before him. He beckoned the other two around to see.

"This is a record of any unusual power spikes in the equaliser field in the past two weeks," he told them. "First column is location and time," he said, pointing to the first column of numbers, "second is strength measured in the category units of psychic strength, and third is source type."

"Source type...?" Michael asked.

"Whether it came from a human, Time Lord, whatever. They all leave different signatures depending on what kind of brain broadcast the thought."

"I'm guessing that's me," the Doctor remarked, pointing to one entry just over a week ago. It had a strength of just over five-and-a-half and was marked 'Time Lord'.

"Yes. In fact, all these are you," Stanley told him, pointing to a plethora of entries of similar strength, all of which were marked Time Lord.

"Are you sure?"

"Unless you hid another Time Lord in my house, I'm sure."

"Fair enough." Amy certainly wasn't nearby, he'd know precisely where she was otherwise. "Did you grab any other Time Lord signals?"

"Other than from you, no. I thought you were the last of your kind?" Stanley shot him a quizzical glance.

"It's complicated," the Doctor replied. No need to say anything about Amy he didn't need to. Not yet, anyway.

"Hmm. Well, the answer is no, we didn't. All the Time Lord signals that we've ever detected have been from you."

The Doctor exhaled a sigh of relief. _Perhaps she's hiding herself so effectively that she'll be impossible to track._ Not ideal, but definitely an improvement.

"But..."

He caught his breath. That was the last word he wanted to hear.

"But what?" His voice was light, delicate, but a rather nasty ball had suddenly deposited itself in his stomach. _But_ rarely led to anything good.

"But we did find something strange a few days ago. At the hospital which got attacked today, actually. At first we thought it was a system error, it was so obviously impossible... but now I'm not so sure." He scrolled the list down to the very end. "Here. The last entry is a six-plus, so a category seven spike, lasting 20 seconds. Even that was difficult to believe in itself, there are no category sevens that I'm aware of, but then we looked at the source and simply decided it was obviously a bug." He eyed the Time Lord carefully. "But since you seem to be looking for something big, I guess it isn't. Is this what you were expecting?"

The Doctor's eyes were as wide as dinner-plates, fixed on the entry... and the nature of the source.

_Human._

"No," he said quietly. "It most certainly wasn't."

* * *

><p>Kate awoke to one of the most seductive, alluring scents she'd ever smelled. It took her a moment to sift through the various airs wafting up her nose. <em>Geez.<em> Clearly, someone was making one hell of a breakfast.

She clambered out of bed, morning grogginess chased away by the promise of copious amounts of good food waiting outside. She changed into a loose T-shirt, woollen sweater and knee-length skirt before following her nose to the kitchen. She wasn't sure what she'd done to deserve such a treat, but she made a mental note to thank the man later.

However, upon reaching the kitchen, she found that the middle-aged man wasn't the one making her breakfast at all.

"Hi Katherine," Amy greeted her chirpily as she turned a panful of sausages over. "I made you breakfast. Bacon, eggs, fresh bread, sausages, tomatoes – the works."

"Oh. Thanks," Kate replied a little stiffly as she sat herself at the table, eyeing the Time Lady nervously. Thankfully, Amy seemed to neither have her sword nor be in the mood to use one. _Swell._

Amy piled the food onto a wide plate and slid it in front of Kate, taking a seat opposite her. "There you are. Go on, eat up."

"Yeah, sure." Kate hesitated. _Is she really going to just pretend that we can... no, I don't think so. Right. _"Listen, Amy, about yesterday evening..."

Amy's warm smile vanished, as did the light in her eyes. "What about it?"

"Well, I mean... if you want me to stay away, then..."

Unexpectedly, the redhead leaned across and gripped Kate's hand in her slender fingers. "Katherine. Listen to me. I'm not joking when I say that what I did yesterday is one of the worst things I've ever done in my life. And trust me, there's competition."

Kate frowned. "What, even against shooting someone in the face?"

"I did that because I had to. Ten billion people would have died if I hadn't. Yeah, OK, I'm not exactly proud of it, but... but what I did yesterday, in the virtual world... that was just wrong, on every level. I'm sorry, Kate. I'm so, so sorry."

Amy still hadn't let go of the blonde's hands. Kate's liquid-hazel eyes searched Amy's vivid emerald, finding nothing but deep, anguished sorrow and a chilling, horrible _emptiness_ far within her pupils. There were blotches of colour and thin streaks running down Amy's cheeks – clearly, she'd spent most of last night crying her life out.

Despite herself, Kate felt a wave of sympathy wash through her. She knew that what had happened yesterday was only a fraction of a torment afflicting her friend's brilliant mind. She was well aware of all the walls, barriers and defence mechanisms Amy had built over the last few years, but she knew they were almost all gone, all shattered, now. She took her other hand and wrapped it around her friend's, entwining their fingers.

"Don't be. You're my friend, you don't need to apologise to me."

Amy smiled gratefully. "Mutual." She extricated her fingers and leaned back in her chair, the old enigmatic flicker in her eyes once again. "Now eat up, I'm not warming it again if it goes cold."

Kate simply rolled her eyes.

They spoke no further at breakfast about the events of the previous evening. Kate was by no means forgetting it, and she remained wary. Amy on the other-hand had moved on in double-quick time, and by mid-morning was acting as if nothing had happened between them. Kate didn't let this go on for long before calling her out on it.

"Time Lord brain," Amy replied simply. "It works quicker, compartmentalises better."

Kate snorted. "Those psychiatrists would have a field day with you now."

It was probably not the smartest thing to say, because Amy's smile instantly became decidedly fixed, and her eyes averted downwards. "Yeah, perhaps," she mumbled, before looking back up again. "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten and I'm definitely not pretending it didn't happen. But we all do dumb things to the people important to us occasionally. Now come on." She tossed a headset over to Kate and put on her own. "Time to get cracking."

* * *

><p>Seven and a half seconds.<p>

That was all. From posing the question to figuring out the answer.

_Why_ was unclear. _Why_ was unimportant. _How_ was the important question. And the question was simple. How could a _human_ produce a category seven psychic burst? Only Amy could do that, only Amy's mind was capable of those feats. The only way a _human_ could produce that sort of signal was if part of Amy's mind had lodged itself inside...

_Oh._

Seven and a half seconds, and he had his answer.

Amy and Katherine were mind-linked. Or, more accurately, Amy had deposited part of her consciousness into Kate's mind, forging a link between the two brains. Why on earth she would do so, he had no clue. Amy had implied that she had put her resentment of the blonde behind her, but even so... perhaps it was an accident, she'd meant to place it somewhere else, in an external memory storage of some kind, and something had gone wrong. As it often did if you started chopping up your consciousness into little pieces.

But, again, why was unimportant right now. What was important was the fact that Amy had created a beacon, a piece of her own mind that was, for all intents and purposes, unshielded. Hence the spike – when the mind-link was created, a flood of memories would have poured themselves into Kate's mind. A transfer of consciousness wasn't something that happened quietly. Not when a consciousness of the complexity of Amy Pond's was involved.

So that explained the spike. Which in turn explained how they'd been detected. And explained why Amy had feared that she was being tracked by her thoughts... obviously she knew about the mind-link as well or at the very least suspected.

It also meant that there was no way they could hide. Amy's mind was already deeply unstable – it had improved in recent months as she recovered from the overload, but this wouldn't help. Soon, thoughts, memories and emotions would start leaking into the part of Amy that had been placed inside Kate, and that part of Amy, having nowhere to place those thoughts – as it was stuck in a _human_ mind – would simply broadcast them to the world.

_Hopefully Kate is prepared for Amy's dreams, because she's going to get a lot of them now._

"Doctor? Something wrong?" Stanley asked, eyeing the Time Lord nervously. The Doctor turned to fix his cool gaze on the man.

"I have someone," he began slowly, "who is more important to me than you could possibly imagine. She is in terrible danger, and I need to save her. I don't require that you help me, but if you do, it will change your life, and change everything you know about this world. Because nothing here is as it seems."

_Change everything you know about this world._ The words reverberated around Stanley's head, as a distant, long-buried memory surface once more.

He'd just been a young combat engineer with a history degree back then, but already sick of war, sick of death, sick of destruction. He'd been drinking when a man in a suit had come up to him and made a scarcely believable offer.

"_We know you're tired of war,_" the man had told him, "_So we want to give you the opportunity to bring peace."_

"_I don't know if I can trust you. What kind of peace are you talking about?"_ He'd asked, both suspicious and intrigued.

"_A paradise._"

He'd been given blueprints and sent on his way to rally support, spread the word, get resources. It had taken years and years, and more than a little surreptitious backing from the shadowy, unknown group who had suggested it to him in the first place, most of it beyond his knowledge, but he'd got there.

He'd done it. Earthsphere had been built around an aging brown dwarf star. A place free from violence and harm. A place where you literally thought of what you wanted and it happened. A true paradise. Except for one thing...

_The repticore._ Their dirty little secret. How they'd got here, why they'd got here, no one knew. Once or twice he'd tried to contact the organisation that had originally sponsored the plan, but had gotten naught but silence in reply. He'd had to remove all the forests because of them, lest they turn into a rampant infestation, save for one. Even he couldn't touch that one.

And now... now the species he'd spent so long studying in his youth had come, and its last surviving member was telling him that his initial suspicions, which he'd long discarded, may have been correct.

He gazed at the Time Lord's piercing blue eyes and responded in a firm, clear tone.

"What do you need me to do?"

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<strong>


	35. His Worst Nightmare Come True

**I was really happy this, by the way, with respect to Amy and Kate's interaction here. One of the times I feel like I've got Amy's cold, distant inhumanity vs. her brittle vulnerability right.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 35. His Worst Nightmare Come True: 1 April 2011<br>**

Dying is unpleasant.

Really very, very unpleasant. For one thing, most modes of death involve pain of some kind, which is always a downer. Even the few that don't still leave you aware that your body is shutting down, and the steady loss of control never fails to be disconcerting. And usually painful.

Indeed, Jack Harkness was well aware that 'instant death'... wasn't, usually. But at least he could return to actually _say_ so, and moreover he was in the (as far as he knew) unique situation of saying that whilst dying sucked, _coming back_ was just as bad.

It wasn't like waking up at all. It was more like being struck by lightning (and he knew what that felt like too), the sudden jolt of energy that ran through his body as his nervous system suddenly reactivated. Every cell, every bone, every nerve felt as if it were on fire.

After a second, the sensation stopped and Jack opened his eyes. That was the one advantage coming back had – you were actually alive afterwards. Panting heavily, he gazed around to get a bearing on his surroundings.

He could feel a fierce warmth on his face. _Must be afternoon_. As the world came into focus around him, however, he saw black shaded with blue, speckled by twinkling stars above him.

_What?_

He looked around more closely. He was still in the forest, surrounded by odd, organic looking structures, twisted, scaly ochre-coloured columns ten feet high.

_Um... what?_

He tried to stand up and move away, but immediately found himself blocked by an invisible wall. The air glowed red around him as the forcefield revealed itself. _Damn._

"He wakes," a voice, a low, reptillian hiss, emerged from the shadows. He span around, looking for the source, but there was nothing to be seen in the darkness of the forest.

"The deathless one?" Another voice, this one even lower and hissier – frankly, rather evil-sounding.

"Yes."

"Kill him again, maybe that will see an end to him."

His blood ran cold. _Ah, no, I'd rather you didn't._

"Look, I'm a prisoner, OK?" He called out in his firm American accent, belying his sudden nervousness. He held up his open palms for emphasis "See? Unarmed."

"He speaks our tongue," the first voice replied, clearly hesitant.

There was an odd shrieking noise, one that sounded oddly like... _laughter?_ "He has raised claws, fool. If you won't, I'll take him myself."

He barely had time to turn around to see a towering repticore, blood-eyed, claw glinting in the starlight poised to strike him down. He began to stagger away, hoping the forcefield would protect him (or, even better, not be there at all) but the repticore seemed to pass straight through it.

_Uh oh._

Suddenly, just as the repticore was about to strike him down there was a flash of gold and a ear-shattering shriek from the repticore. It beat a hasty retreat as another, even larger repticore, this one with chocolate-brown scales and a thin golden stripe down its back, chased it away.

Jack blinked once, twice. _That_ definitely wasn't in the script. Still facing the gigantic lizard, he reached an arm behind him to check that the forcefield was still there. A burning sensation told him it was, and he quickly drew his arms back, raising his palms once more in a probably-pointless gesture of surrender.

"You know," the repticore before him said, still yet to turn to face him, "in our culture, raising your claws is the most aggressive gesture one can give, and generally precedes an attack."

His hands were in his pockets before he could even process the words. The repticore gave that odd hiss-shriek of a laugh again before continuing.

"I apologise for the behaviour of my children. They can be... reckless at times." Another rasping noise, this one unquestionably a tired sigh. "Five decades trapped here, and my children still do not understand the ways of our people."

Jack opened his mouth, but no words came out. Nothing about this made sense – for once thing, this repticore seemed, well, if not friendly, polite. And not a mindless animal, either. And – _five decades trapped here..._ whatever that meant, it certainly wasn't anything he'd expected.

"Who – who are you?" He eventually managed to say, in a voice quavering much more than he'd intended.

"Hm. I think the more useful question, deathless, is who _you_ are and why you are here. After all, you are in _my_ domain." The repticore turned at last, and Jack saw for the first time that rather than blood-red, its eyes were a piercing sky-blue – not unlike the Doctor's, he realised. Anyway, it had asked a question and he decided it would be a very good idea if he were truthful from now on – the more he looked at those claws the sharper they seemed.

"Captain Jack Harkness," he trotted out immediately, only just catching himself before he pulled out his usual salute. _Probably not a good idea in the circumstances._

Another shriek-laugh, though this seemed more a chuckle. "Captain? You run a ship?"

He swallowed a little. Why did the dangerous ones always have to be so _smart_? "Er, no. I... it's not really a proper rank, just a title, I, um..."

"Took?"

_Be honest._ "Well... yeah." He swallowed again, not really enjoying this conversation one bit. "Listen, I don't wish you any harm, but-"

"But you wished us enough harm to try and kill some of my children," the repticore pointed out, its eyes flashing dangerously.

Jack's face paled. That had been a bad thing to say for sure. "I'm sorry, I wasn't aware-"

"Yes, you did it in self-defence. Perhaps in future you may consider that self-defence runs both ways, but no matter. You wish to leave, I know, but I'm afraid you cannot do that."

The blood almost froze solid in Jack's veins. "Why... why not?"

"Oh, you're free to leave _here_ whenever you please, with the obvious rider that if you attack us we will kill you – though that isn't much of an issue where you are concerned," the repticore noted. "But I digress. What I was referring to is that you cannot leave this place, this world. It is simply not possible in the way you desire."

_Is this thing psychic? _He was intrigued now, curiosity replacing fear. He decided to sit down, a neutral, open gesture that would hopefully ease the chances of getting his head cut off. "How did you know I'm from another world?"

"You are a time traveller; our kind can smell it. We know of the machine that brought you here, and the device you wear on your claw."

"I don't understand," Jack replied, stating the obvious. He had no idea how a lizard could 'smell' time machines, he had no idea what that meant. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You will have noticed by now that time travel is _impossible_. Yet your device somehow transported you from elsewhere on this world back here; we watched you leave. I find this curious – why did you come back?"

He blinked, frowned slightly. "I didn't _choose_ to come back here. Someone-" he almost said _tricked_, but stopped himself in time, "-sent me."

"To...?"

"To... look for a friend."

"I see. And presumably you wish to take her away from this place in your time machine?"

"Yes – hang on." Something it had said had jarred in his mind. One word, perhaps the clue he'd been looking for, had _died_ for. _"__Her?"_

The repticore turned away, evidently deep in thought. "Several night-cycles ago," it began, "two beings stumbled into our territory. One human, one not. Beyond that we knew nothing of them. Naturally, some of my children interpreted this as an attack and rushed to eliminate the intruders. None returned."

His pulse quickened. That _definitely_ sounded like Amy. And two beings – Kate was with her. This was good news. Very, very good news.

"When I discovered this, I decided to investigate myself. But I did not attack, as it was immediately clear they were fleeing from our territory. I followed them through the forest, remaining hidden right up until I caught up with the girls. They could not sense me for some reason, and I had to be almost within striking distance to sense them. But what I felt... was beyond my comprehension. A mind the size of a star."

It clicked instantly. _Amy._

"And where is she?" He shot bolt upright, face alight with eager anticipation, full of excitement. "Is she safe? Where has she gone?"

The repticore sighed. "I do not know. They are gone; I cannot sense her now. Both of them seemed hurt before they left with a human in one of the man-ships. Where they are now, I cannot say. I believe they are alive, however."

His shoulders slumped, his eyes downcast. Well, it had been a brief hope, but that would have been _much_ too easy, wouldn't it? One thing itched in his mind, however, about the beings surrounding him. "You talk as if you can sense time, but you're psychic as well? How does that work?"

Another dry shriek-chuckle. "Captain Harkness, there are many things about us you do not understand, but you will most likely find those out in due course. But the passage of time is intimately linked to how it is perceived, those aware of the flow of time will likely be attuned to how it is perceived by others. They are, in many senses, one and the same."

"So, what, you can sense the flow of time in this place? Do you know why the TARDIS is broken, then? Our time machine?"

The repticore turned to face him directly, sky-blue reptillian eyes meeting sky-blue human eyes. "Yes. And because of that, I wish to make you an offer."

Jack stiffened, instantly on guard.

"What kind of offer?"

"One that will save my people."

Jack was still very, very wary, but given the forcefield surrounding him and the imposing, vicious nature of his captors, he didn't have much choice in the matter, did he?

"I'm listening."

* * *

><p>The scenario Amy had created for them was straight out of the 'surreal' box, what with its maze-like network of brick walls, behind many of which were black-suited assassins. The goal was simple – get to the other side.<p>

Easier said than done, as Kate found out. She wasn't a Time Lord, she couldn't just feel people around the corner. She had to rely on old fashioned tricks like listening for breaths, guessing for ambush spots and sheer dumb luck. Unfortunately for her, luck wasn't on her side, and often the first moment she found out about its abandonment of her was when a sword or bullet got driven straight through her chest.

_Oh for god's sake,_ she thought, crumpling to the floor and looking down to see herself bleeding out for the fifth time. _Time to start again. _Fortunately, Amy had placed a pain filter on her headset for her, so it hurt no more than a bee sting. It was kind of annoying, however, they way she lost control over her body as she, well, died. When Kate had asked Amy if _her_ headset had a similar filter, though, the Time Lady had been strangely – not to mention suspiciously – evasive.

After another two failed attempts, she finally made it to the other side of the maze. She leaned against the last corner, levelling her breathing off and pressing her ear against the wall so she could hear whatever was around the corner.

_Nothing there..._ but she would wait a bit longer before dashing out. She'd learnt that lesson the nasty way. A good decision, because a minute later, she heard a noise that most definitely wasn't meant to be there.

A cough.

She narrowed her eyes. _Take him on or try and sneak past?_ She decided, as usual, on the former. She steeled her muscles, readying herself, and with a single movement dashed out behind the corner and raised her blaster rifle to firing position.

But it wasn't an assassin behind the corner at all. She lowered the gun.

"Amy?"

The Time Lady was sitting on the polished concrete floor, leaning against the outside wall of the maze. "'Bout bloody time. I've been waiting for you here for about an hour." She gave Kate a thin smile before coughing again. Kate was about to ask why she was coughing.

Then she saw the blood dribbling from her mouth.

_Oh no._ She raced over, letting the weapon fall from her hands. "Amy – what the hell? What haven't you healed yourself?" Kate could only 'heal' herself by, well, dying and causing a reset, but Amy was in full control here – she could do anything she wanted.

Amy closed her eyes as Kate knelt before her and leaned her head against the wall. She chuckled but immediately winced, clearly in quite some pain. "That'd be cheating," she managed to say.

"_Cheating?_ Seriously, Amy? You're bleeding out on a wall. You even bothered to fix your clothes and clean up the blood, but you're not going to heal yourself?"

"More or less," Amy replied with as much nonchalance as she could muster. "In normal circumstances, I'll be dead – or regenerating – in a few minutes from blood loss. Teach me to try and do a speed run of the maze."

"Do you even have a pain filter?"

"Nope, nothing. This is exactly how it would feel in real life."

Kate pinched the bridge of her noise. "Jesus bloody Christ. How many times did you go through?"

"Only had to go through it once. Didn't go as well as I'd like, though." Amy winced again, and only gave token resistance when Kate peeled back some of her clothes.

"Oh gods," Kate gasped when she saw the extent of her friend's injuries. There were several lacerations across her torso and arms, some quite deep, and what was unmistakeably a gunshot wound in her lower belly. Well, that explained her current condition. The sight of it made Kate's blood run cold. "Oh, shit. Amy, Amy, Amy." She peeled back even more clothing, exposing the Time Lady's upper body. There were several cuts to Amy's upper chest as well. It was more than enough to make Kate feel nauseous. She shook her head.

"Amelia Pond, look at me," she told Amy sternly. The use of her real name was enough to make Amy comply, slowly opening her eyelids to meet her friend's furious gaze. "I'm going to ask you again – _why the hell won't you heal yourself?_"

Amy frowned and coughed again, weakly, before answering in a voice only just above a whisper. "How much do you know about pain, Katherine?"

"I know enough," Kate replied firmly. "I know enough that what you've done – what you've become – is just plain bloody stupid. In case you've forgotten, I almost _died_ myself in that forest. So don't you lecture _me_ about getting hurt."

Amy narrowed her eyes ever so slightly, opening her mouth to respond, but before she could do so another wracking spasm and cough coursed through her body. Her eyes darkened, glassing over as her head rolled limply to the side, her breathing ceased.

Kate closed her eyes and bowed her head, rubbing her forehead with her palm. "So is this it?" She shouted angrily to no one in particular. Certainly not at the 'dead' Time Lady in front of her. "Is this some kind of emo-trip, you think that the hurts you get here can distract you from the hurt in the real world?"

"No."

Kate opened her eyes and stood, turning to find a very much alive-and-well Amy Pond behind her, sword fastened to her belt, arms folded across her chest and gazing coolly at Katherine with steel in her emerald gaze.

"Then what, huh? Why subject yourself to this?"

"To teach myself."

"Teach yourself _what_?" Kate yelled at her. "'Oh, try not to get stabbed, that sort of hurts and you'll probably die.' Great lesson, thanks. Really needed to know that."

A flutter ran through Kate's mind, a flash of anger emanating from the red-head before her. But Amy controlled it, her face remained impassive and her voice level. "You don't get it, do you? All the most important lessons in my life have come when I was hurt."

"Like what? Like that coma you had when you were fifteen, which taught you never to trust anyone ever again? That taught you that _you_ were the only person that could help you? "

Another flash of anger, this one much, much stronger. "If you've seen that you'd know that I was trying to forget about that, if you didn't mind. A task _you_ haven't made easier by taking all those memories from me."

"Then _what?!_ Because if you hadn't noticed, you were _wrong_ about that. And you were _wrong_ about me when you thought I was your worst enemy. You were _wrong_ about the Doctor when you thought he'd never come back."

"I know." Amy replied, still keeping her voice rigidly even. She was _not_ going to have a repeat of last night. "And you know something? That's why I am who I am."

"You can dispense with the philosophy, thanks, I'm not in the mood. All I want to know is _WHY._ In case you hadn't noticed, I died a fair few times on the way here too but I didn't _choose_ to get hurt."

"Nor did I, genius," Amy snapped back, her first external display of emotion. "I don't believe in self-harm. I've been dealing with pain my whole life, I don't need to add more of my own. It wasn't _this_ sword that cut me to ribbons."

"Bullshit," Kate snarled back at her. "This entire place, everything and everyone here is a product of _your_ mind, Amy. You _let _yourself get hurt, that's why you didn't... oh."

It was a flash of light in her head, an epiphany, pure and simple. Everything clicked into place. Finally, after years and years of trying and failing, she finally understood what made Amy Pond tick.

It was if she saw her friend in a brand new light; no longer the hard, aggressive firebrand, but the scared, confused and vulnerable young girl hidden inside. She saw through all those walls, those barriers, internal and external, that had been years in the making – now all crumbled to dust, leaving her friend raw, exposed. Saw through the coarse outer shell into the chaotic emptiness within. The fury in her eyes didn't quite dissipate, but her voice softened ever so slightly.

"You really, really hate yourself, don't you? More than anything in your life. You've loathed yourself for years. Not just simple, superficial hatred, but deep, full-on contempt. _That's_ why you were so cold and distant to Rory when you were together. _That's_ why you didn't heal yourself. You simply don't care."

Katherine paused, eyeing for a reaction. Amy didn't so much as move a muscle. She barrelled on, determined to get this out in the open, confront Amelia with the harsh reality of what she was becoming.

"_That's_ why you don't really mind that everyone thinks you're dead. _That's_ why you wished you were normal again, free of all the responsibilities and power so you couldn't really hurt anyone else. Not in a big way, anyway. And all that cockiness, hitting on boys, the kissogram, the racy outfits, that whole 'Amy' shtick, that's just you trying not to think about it, isn't it? Trying to get you away from yourself. It's not just that you didn't trust me or Rory or anyone else. You don't trust _yourself _at all."

Amy didn't answer, but her shell cracked at last. Her expression loosened, softened, her eyes averted and her shoulders slumped slightly. Kate knew instantly that she was on the money, and her voice dropped to a gentle whisper as understanding grew.

"Why, Amelia? Is it a species thing? Because you told me that the Doctor hates himself too."

"He shouldn't." Amy answered in a flat, bitter monotone. "He saves people. I don't."

"You saved me."

"And I have to. It's what I have to do now. I _have_ to save you, I dragged you into this mess, I _have_ to get you out. But instead I almost tried to kill you."

Kate brushed it off, knowing that Amy was referring to the freak incident when Amy had hit her on the side of the head in a fit of rage and caused a major scare, years ago now. They were both different people back then. "The first time was an accident. Last night wasn't real anyway."

"And nor is this. But as you said, this is all a product of my mind, isn't it? I _wanted_ to. That's the point."

"But you said sorry for it."

Amy laughed, a cold, mirthless laugh. "You think that makes it OK, does it? 'Sorry, I almost slit your throat just now, but I'll just make a little speech which makes everything hunky-dory.'"

"I know you wouldn't actually kill me. I know I asked some stupid questions, and I did a dumb thing by stealing your memories."

"Yeah, you did, but that's in the past now, isn't it? You're probably my best friend now, since the Doctor and I are a bit more than friends, I barely know Jack and, well, Rory... look what I did to him. He adored me, he cared for me, he stood by me every step of my life, and what did I do?" Another cold, bitter laugh. "I ran away from him on the night before his wedding, tried to cheat on him and broke his heart. And you... as I said, you're one of my best friends now, you're one of the only people who knows I'm still alive, and, well..."

"Amy, I trust you," Kate told her simply. "I know you'll get us out of here alive. You're like the Doctor – you save people. That's why you're a Time Lady."

"You _know_ why I'm a Time Lady," Amy reminded her.

"That's not what I meant, dolt."

Amy gave a fleeting smile, but it quickly vanished, replaced by a far-away, pensive expression. "Can I show you something?"

"Whatever you like. You're in control here."

The Time Lady closed her eyes as the world dissolved around them.

* * *

><p>"Not possible."<p>

"No such thing."

"I appreciate that, Doctor, but if she's fled to one of the enclaves as I suspect she has, the equaliser field is too weak to find anyone there. That's probably good for her safety, if your theory is correct," Stanley pointed out.

"We're not talking about an ordinary person here, Stanley, or even an ordinary Time Lord," the Doctor replied, pacing up and down. "Is there any way, any way at all, of contacting her without attracting attention?"

"Couldn't you just talk to her in your mind?" Michael asked. "I mean, that seems the simplest option if she's as strong as those impulses say she is."

He'd had to tell them the truth about her as soon as they'd asked; the evidence, after all, was right before their eyes, there was no use hiding it.

"I wouldn't be able to get my message over the noise unless you disabled the entire equaliser field. Given that that amounts to a planet-wide blackout, I don't think that's a wise idea. I'm not here to cause _that_ much trouble." _Not yet_, he added in his mind.

"Have you tried?"

"Yes."

Michael seemed a little put out by having his idea shot down so easily, so he sunk back into his chair. The Doctor took little notice of him, continuing to pace.

"There must be _some_ way to find her..." he muttered. "Come on... psychic enclave, they fled in a shuttle, but she's hiding herself with Kate and some guy called Iverson. Where would she have gone?"

"Wait," Stanley cut across him, his voice suddenly sharp. "Did you just say 'Iverson'?"

"I did." The Doctor stopped in his tracks, intrigued by the sudden change of tone. "Did you know him?"

A far-away look had crossed Stanley's face. Apparently Iverson gone missing at the hospital, but he hadn't concerned himself much over finding him. If the girls had gone with him, however, Stanley knew that there was only one place he would take them. He'd not spoken to his brother in _years_, not after the falling out they'd had. But if he had to talk to him to find out the truth about _his_ creation, then so be it. He clicked his fingers at the technician who was still busy repairing a server on the wall. "Reroute my communicator to quantum entanglement line X162 and set up a call," he ordered with full military force. He pulled out a pocket communicator and tossed it to the Doctor, who caught it in front of his face.

"Do you think you can find her?" He asked as he put the communicator against his ear and moved towards an adjoining room to take the call.

"I already have."

An epiphany was a glorious experience. Having your eyes opened, your whole view on the world shaken, stirred and turned upside-down was truly uplifting, invigorating once you saw the world in a completely new light. Some epiphanies were instant.

This one took two minutes.

A hundred and twenty seconds and all was clear. The failure of the TARDIS and of his vortex manipulator. The reason the Doctor had never heard of this place, as if it were completely absent from time. The true nature of the repticore before him; not wild, untamed beasts but a dying, starving race.

But it also told him one other thing, the clearest revelation of all: Amy and the Doctor were in a world of trouble. And they probably didn't know. So he had one condition to impose.

"Alright," he said, standing fully upright, no longer fearful or apprehensive, but burning with purpose and energy. "I'll help you. But on one condition."

The gold-scaled repticore was, fortunately, sufficiently wise to know that he couldn't have it all his way. After all, the human was the immortal one here. "Name it."

"You help me find my friends. Once we're done, once we've destroyed the equaliser field, you help me find them and get them safe."

The repticore mulled it over for a few seconds. Well, it was only three people. In return for saving three people, an entire race, a people would be saved. It was more than a fair trade.

"We have a deal."

Jack beamed, his first open display of happiness in... he had no idea how long. _If this works..._ well, Amy would be buying him drinks for the rest of the year. The repticore extended a claw-fingered arm out towards him. He hesitated before taking it, still apprehensive of just how _dangerous_ it looked. But then he remembered – it wasn't as if his own hands were free of blood. Far from it.

He wrapped his hand around the clawed fingers and sealed the first agreement between repticore and human in living memory.

_Just one more thing left to do, then._

"So what _is_ your name?"

The repticore gave another dry chuckle. "Our kind do not use names often, we find them redundant when there are so few of us remaining. But in the name of courtesy, I will introduce myself. I am Machariam – the last father of our people."

* * *

><p>When Amy opened her eyes again, the maze had gone. In its place was a large, darkened room, illuminated by a dull red light and lined with computer terminals. Cascading sparks from broken cables lightened the room every now and then. The TARDIS was sitting in the corner.<p>

"_Weapons systems activated._"

Kate looked around for the source of the computerised voice. The Doctor and Rory were poring over a large terminal, Amy standing with a large pistol in her pocket about ten metres behind. There were several other people Kate didn't recognise – a woman with light brown hair and an expensive looking suit, a gruff man in military battle gear and a bloke who quite frankly looked utterly ordinary apart from the fact he had twelve fingers. The woman blanched and rushed over to the Doctor, evidently appalled at something he'd done.

"Wait – what do you think you're doing?"

"Discharging the weapons," the Doctor replied with his usual confident, airy tone. "Only way to ensure that that this fleet is harmless – use up all the ammo, so to speak. Don't worry, I'm not aiming anywhere near your star."

The woman didn't seem entirely convinced, but she stepped backwards, evidently choosing to trust him. The computerised voice, evidently from the terminal the Doctor was working at, spoke again.

"_Coordinates confirmed. Power at one hundred percent. All atom-laser fuel loaded. Firing sequence initiated. Firing in ten... nine... eight..."_

Amy – the real, sword-wielding Amy – had taken up position next to her copy. She motioned for Kate to come across. Kate did so, unsure as to why.

"_Seven... six..."_

At that instant, time paused around them, freezing everything in place except the two of them. Kate looked at her friend, quizzical.

"Look to your right," Amy told her calmly. Kate did so, and saw a man in a robe holding what looked like a flash-drive, about to reach up to plug it into a console. Something about the twisted, malicious leer on his face told Kate that that wasn't a good thing.

"Who the hell is he?"

"Evil guy. He's trying to blow up a star and kill ten billion people. The Doctor's about to fire the weapons harmlessly into space, but that flash drive will override the targeting and fire at the star instead."

"Sounds bad – so what happens? Does the Doctor see him?"

"No. No one can see him except me. Clever bastard's hidden himself too well."

"So what happens?"

"Watch. I'll slow everything down so you can see."

Time restarted, and the man's hand began to move the flash-drive towards the slot.

"_Five,"_ the computerised voice boomed out, distorted by the slowed-down time.

Suddenly, a frown crept across the face of the 'past' Amy, as if she'd noticed something odd. She turned to her right, and saw the robed man, saw what he was about to do as their eyes locked. Her eyes widened, blazing into life as her hand began to move towards the pocket. At the same instant, a shudder ran through the Doctor as if he too were suddenly aware of the scene playing out behind him. He turned, face filled with horror.

The flash drive clicked into place.

"_Alternate coordinates entered. Please confirm override._" The man, still not taking his eyes off Amy, moved his hand towards a large red button, one that would presumably confirm the new target and doom ten billion people.

The Doctor screamed something Kate couldn't understand, but it was too late. Amy's aim was straight and true, the bullet lodging itself directly between the man's eyes. They rolled up in his head and he fell limp to the ground, his hand sliding off the console and away from the red button.

"_Alternate coordinates entered. Please confirm override._"

Amy gave the Doctor a brief, triumphant smile, time having returned to normal speed, before pocketing the gun. "I think we're done here. Don't you?"

She strode to the TARDIS and through the doors, leaving only stunned silence in her wake. The real Amy watched after her, a distant expression on her face. Kate moved over to comfort her, placing an arm across her back.

"You did what you had to do," Kate told her softly, though she herself was more than a little shocked by what she'd just seen.

"I know, and I'd do it again, but still. I shot someone in the face and smiled about it."

"And you've been feeling horrible about it ever since. Yet you saved ten billion people."

"By executing someone, Katherine. That's what it was – I point-blank executed a person. An actual living, breathing person. _And I would do it again._ Do you understand what that makes me?_"_

"But you saved ten billion people."

Amy shook her head and motioned across the room, having frozen time for everyone except the two of them again. "Look over there."

"Why?"

"I didn't bring you here just so you could see me murder someone. Go and look."

Kate frowned at her, confused, but moved over to the other side of the room, just in front of the TARDIS. She yelled in alarm when she saw what Amy had pointed her to. "Good god, there's dead people here – heaps of them! Ten, eleven-"

"Fifteen," Amy said quietly. "All soldiers. All under _my_ command. I asked them to come with me, they said yes, and they all died because of it. This whole thing was my idea, you know. Not the Doctor's. The reason the soldiers were here is because I brought them here. Didn't save them, did I?"

"Did you know their names?"

Amy screwed up her eyes, trying not to break down. _Amy Pond doesn't cry._

"No. But I did talk a lot to one. Flirted with him, even. The Captain. Married two months previously. He told me... he told me how they had bought a little house on the beach... but I didn't even know his..."

It was far too much. Her voice broke and faltered, her cheeks now glistening with tears. At once, Kate was across the room and had enveloped Amy in a tight, crushing hug, her golden-blonde hair entangling with shining ginger. Amy was a little taken aback but she rested her head on Kate's shoulder, letting the tears flow freely.

"You are the most extraordinary girl I've ever met, Amelia," the girl who was once her most despised enemy told her. "Don't hate yourself because of it."

* * *

><p><strong>Next chapter will be plotplotplot, so it's worth recapping: We have the Doctor, Stanley and Kate trying to contact Amy. We have Amy and Kate hiding and learning how to defend themselves (in Amy's case, a bit more than that). We have the Windcatcher trying to, well, catch them for unknown reasons. And finally we have Jack, who along with his new repticore friend Machariam is trying to destroy the power source for the entire world, for reasons that I'm obviously withholding for now (no fun in getting all the answers straight away). However, I've given you enough hints for you to guess correctly, so you can have fun with that.<strong>

**Anyway, in the words of you-can-guess-who, this is is where it gets complicated. Please review.  
><strong>


	36. Looking For a Time Lady

**Thought I was gone, eh?**

**Not quite. I've been exceptionally busy over the last few months – anyone who sees what I'm studying will understand why – and plotting difficulties have made this a long, slow, grind. But at no stage did I ever think this wouldn't go up, and I still have plans. Big ones. That ****_will_**** get fulfilled. **

**Nonetheless, I apologise for the delay, and I apologise again for any future lengthy delays that may take place.**

**Next, name change. For no reason other than the previous one was a bit silly, frankly. Fourth, this chapter is on the long side of 'really long'. But that's fair enough given the delay.**

**Finally, on a random note, I seem to be getting a hell of a lot of quite brilliant ideas at obscene hours of the night – like, 2am, 3am – and then forgetting them (obviously). Possibly an issue...**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 36. Looking For a Time Lady: 1 April 2011<br>**

The Windcatcher was a man of simple pleasures. Walks on the beach, swimming in the sea, hiking through the forest – those were his ideas of fun. Not that it made him simple in any way, but after so long in this damn universe, seeing as much of its complexities, dark patches and rough edges as he has, he'd take what he could.

He liked this woodland too. For one thing, it was huge – it'd take several days to cross at its widest point, which was just the way he liked it. It was almost completely silent, too, with naught but the gentle breeze rustling between the leaves on the tall but sparse leaves, or the occasional melodic birdsong to act as counterpoint to the tranquillity. He could spend days here, just walking through the woods, feeling the occasional ray of sunlight on his face, hear the crunch of leaf underfoot.

Unfortunately, today was not that day.

_Noon sharp, here._ That had been the message after he'd sent the code-word that informed his employers that he was on Amelia Pond's trail. Well, he was here, and so were they.

They had, however, been expecting a bit more.

"The code-word was for tracking, not capture," he replied tersely.

They're aware of that, however. They were just making a point.

"Are you trying to set me a deadline?" He asked, eyes narrowed.

_No_ was the reply. In any case, that's not the modification to the contract they wish to propose.

"I'm listening..."

There was a hesitation before they give their proposal. It's not been an easy one. They know he won't like it. However, given the nature of their target and the nature of their task, they feel they have no choice. Operational security, as always, was king.

So they tell him.

"No." The Windcatcher replied firmly. "I don't do kill operations."

He doesn't have a problem killing mercenaries, they pointed out.

"They know what they're getting into. Operational security."

And so is this. And if he has such an aversion to killing, why did he take a shot at an innocent girl? What was his intention there if not to kill? His eyes narrowed, his temper rising.

"I know what I'm doing, I wasn't using lethal rounds. I don't do kill operations. Period." His voice is beginning to tremble.

Technically, though, it's a kill _or capture_ contract, he's perfectly free to achieve his original directive. But if he can't...

"Are you threatening me?"

His employers assure him that they aren't. They'll just cancel the contract, naturally, stopping the flow of money and supplies to his little pet project and, well, wouldn't that just be such a _dark_ outcome for anyone?

They'd hit a raw nerve. "_Now wait just a minute-_"

But they'd already gone, leaving the Windcatcher alone in the balmy woodland air.

* * *

><p>"The police have finished their investigation, Mr Blood."<p>

"Thanks, Louise. Leave it on my desk."

Once Iverson's secretary had deposited the thick, spiral-bound report on his desk and shut the door behind her, Iverson glanced at it pensively for a second. Not because he was interested it in – goodness, no. He was just deciding whether to throw it straight in the bin. On balance, he decided against it; he could always use some more scrap paper.

The hospital had quietened down ever since that day. That meant plenty of spare time where he had frankly nothing much to do. Part of him kept wandering back home to his villa in the hills where those two strange girls were staying under his protection, but he managed to keep his focus somehow.

Either way, he knew that the police report into the attack was basically useless to him. He knew who was behind the attack – knew more than any cop could tell him, anyway. He knew what their aim was, who their target was, and Amy (or was it Amelia?) was beyond their reach for now. As for _why..._

Well, that was what he was spending so much of his spare time finding out.

A friend working in one of the big universities had kindly given him access to the archives, and he'd spent much of his spare time reading up on her species, and _her_ specifically. It was odd, thinking about her as both a rather sweet young lady and at the same time a universal figure of serious importance, but anyway.

Far stranger was the fact that compared to the rest of the Time Lords, and _particularly_ compared to the Doctor, there was almost no information about her at all. Barely a whisper. Hardly the sort of record someone who had given the Dalek Empire such a huge shock (they hadn't reacted well to the news that there was a _second_ fully-grown and rather dangerous Time Lord running around that they'd had no knowledge of). It was if someone had carefully gone through history, deleting all references, any clues to her identity that nasties could latch onto... and it didn't take him long to guess who that someone might have been.

But he was persistent and, thanks to the little hints Amy had inadvertently dropped (such as the fact that she grew up in a little English village in the late 20th and early 21sts century), he'd managed to piece together a picture of Amy's past, sketchy though it might have been.

She had grown up alone. That much was abundantly clear. He'd found records of letters mentioning Leadworth's school asking for special assistance for an orphaned little girl. The girl's name was listed as Amelia rather than Amy, but he trusted his intuition enough to know who it really was. Apparently, she either had no extended family to take care of her, or whatever extended family she had wasn't exactly putting their heart and soul into the task. So that explained one thing.

She'd been in psychiatric care several times, based on some more letters he'd discovered attached to old medical records. A few of them mentioned an unnamed 'ginger terror'... again, he didn't need to be brilliant to work out who that was referring to. There were a range of theories presented on what precisely had been afflicting her, from ordinary childish delusion to ongoing psychological disorder, but he wasn't interested in that. She definitely wasn't normal, that much was clear.

OK. So she'd been orphaned, and she was a little bit mental. That definitely matched up with the girl he sort-of-knew. Rough, hard and with a ruthless, cold streak on the outside. Vulnerable, sweet, compassionate – surprisingly so – inside. A disconnected, lonely girl, waiting for something or someone to complete her and put her back together.

_Just what,_ he wondered, _has the Doctor done to her to make her like this?_

Anyway. Nothing he could find would tell him that, and he immediately ruled out Amy ever telling him. He lived in the here and now, and the here and now was that he had an extremely dangerous Time Lady being chased by an extremely dangerous whatever-the-Windcatcher-was. And whilst he liked Amy and he'd do his best to make sure she got home safe and well, his primary concern was for the less-capable humans around her whom she might inadvertently hurt.

_Katherine._

He switched off his screen, letting out an inaudible sigh. There, too, he was powerless, but for a very different reason. No matter what anyone said to her – and both he and Amy had dropped more than a few hints – the girl absolutely refused to leave her friend's side. They all knew that she could just ask and she'd be returned to the TARDIS by herself, completely safe from harm. But she point-blank refused. They were friends, yes, but when Amy was all but begging her to get the hell away, Iverson was at a loss to explain why she stubbornly refused.

Really, selflessness was one thing. Selflessness was often good. But this was just flat-out reckless. Even Amy, for all her flaws and insecurities, had a self-preservation instinct. Katherine simply didn't seem to care. Not caring was bad. Not caring usually equalled dead. Dead people were, in his experience, useless. He could only hope the same didn't happen to the sharp-tongued blonde.

Not least because he feared that Amy wouldn't survive the experience if she did.

* * *

><p><em>It's their third trip to Paris in as many weeks, though it's the first in a timezone Amy is familiar with. If she were to choose between the three, this would definitely be her favourite, though the World's Fair was rather lovely. The tiebreaker is the fact this is the only time she'd actually got what she'd originally wanted – namely, a cruise on the Seine.<em>

_At the moment, however, she's not thinking about how wonderful this is, how amazing this is, as the little boat drifts idly down the river, the Notre Dame passing them by. Her face is clouded and her thoughts are elsewhere, as she absent-mindedly slurps on some ice-cream the Doctor is feeding her (she still can't move her arms, annoyingly)._

_Doctor, she suddenly thinks, can I ask you something?_

"_Shoot, Pond." he replies. "Ask away."_

_She hesitates before she asks her question. It's a deeply personal question, and one that she's not even sure she wants answered._

_She wants to know how he'd feel if she died._

"_What-"? He splutters, taken aback. "What do you-?"_

_He's misinterpreted her. She knows how he feels about her, how important they are to each other. She knows that he'd lay down his life for her, and she'd do the same in return. But, well, his friends have always been such tiny parts of his life, haven't they? Just flickering in and out, barely noticed. Though 'friends' doesn't quite cover whatever the hell their relationship is now._

"_Amy. You are all enormous parts of my life. And you..." He rubs the back of her slightly slumped shoulders encouragingly. "You are all I ever remember."_

_She's not convinced. She isn't the first Time Lady he's travelled with. She's not the first lonely, lost girl he's travelled with. What makes her so special? Is it her abilities? Her troubled past? Is he just guilty about what he'd done to her? Or was it simply the fact they were the last of their kind?_

_What makes her so different from the rest of his friends? _

"_You like the same flavour of ice-cream as me," he replies, smiling. "That's something."_

_She groans inside. Seriously, Doctor._

"_Being serious."_

_For what has to be the hundredth time, she promises to smack him when she can use her arms again. She means it, she wants a straight answer from him. This is important to her. Really, really important. _

_With one hand, he upturns her chin so he can look straight at her. The smile on his face is soft, gentle, and pure, weathered by centuries of loss and guilt, his eyes shot with wisdom, hope, and love. Amy's breath hitches in her throat, and she realises that he's given her his answer._

"_I know, Amelia. Now, how about some more ice-cream?"_

_It's not that she's special or unique. He doesn't need her to be._

"Doctor?"

He tried to open his eyes, but they didn't seem to be responding.

"Hurgh..."

"_Doctor!"_

Slowly, as if weighed down by bricks, the Doctor's eyelids slid open, revealing a harrowed-looking face above him. It took him a moment to realise that he'd been unconscious. It took him another moment to realise he was now awake – and yet another for him to realise that he was on the floor.

He bolted upright, so rapidly that Michael jerked back in alarm, only narrowly avoiding banging a head on the ceiling.

"Yes! Right, so that's... sorry, what were you saying?" The Doctor, as always, tried to restart the flow of conversation from before, but it didn't quite fly. "Just dozed off for a moment, that's all."

"You were muttering to yourself," Michael told him with a still-worried expression. He was still holding the cloth he'd been using to wipe the cold sweat from the Time Lord's brow.

"Was I?" The Doctor sat up, dusting himself off and straightening his bow-tie. "Well, that happens occasionally. If you start to hear me sing, though, that's probably a sign you should run away – there are at least twelve viruses on four planets that will do that, including one that also makes you dance and wear funny hats. Anyway, I'm sure this all had a point, but I've forgotten – what were you saying again?"

Michael shook his head. "Come on. The shuttle's ready."

It soon transpired, however, that in Michael's language 'ready' meant that all the stuff the Doctor needed to set up the tracking link was dumped unceremoniously on the shuttle's floor, which was not quite what the Doctor had intended. He didn't really mind, though – no one else had any clue what the man was doing, let alone why he needed the a small store's worth of whitegoods to get it out.

"Er, yeah – when I said 'ready', I meant-"

"Not a problem," the Doctor replied chirpily, inspecting an old, broken hairdryer as if it were the most fascinating the thing in the world. "Means I can just set up everything from scratch; probably easier that way if we're being honest."

"Setting up what, exactly?"

"Tracking link," the Doctor mumbled through a mouth full of cables as he got to work dismembering a vacuum cleaner. "I can backtrace the signal to the communication link that Stanley told us about – here, hold this – and with a little luck, that'll tell us exactly where we need to go. Some other handy things I need to set up too."

Michael turned over the camera the Doctor had just thrust into his hands, wondering what use it could possibly have. "Er-"

"It's a camera. It films stuff. So film away, film-man. That's your job now."

"What, film right now?"

"No time quite like the present. Unless it's Monday, of course."

Michael frowned sceptically – so, he had gone from hospital receptionist to sidekick on a quest to a cameraman. Nevertheless, he did as he was told and pressed the record button. After all, the Doctor did _seem_ to know what he was doing. "So where are you from, anyway?"

"Me? Oh. Odd little place by the name of Gallifrey. You won't have heard of it."

And Michael hadn't, though his answer had sprung up another question in his mind. "You're alien, aren't you? I mean, you look-"

"Yes and yes. Time Lord to you. We came first. Hold this thing still for me, would you?" The mess on the floor had been cleared up in double-quick time, with most of the pieces of junk scattered around now piled up in a rather precarious-looking tower that almost reached up to the ceiling of the shuttle.

"You sure this thing will hold up?" Michael asked in a voice that clearly indicated that he himself certainly wasn't, gazing up and down the unsteady heap. He had to be careful not to lean over on his free hand too much, lest a stray movement topple the whole thing over.

"'Course I'm sure," the Doctor replied cheerfully. "Solid as a rock, this thing – and that was meant to do that," he added as one of the canisters he'd jammed haphazardly onto the side tumbled away.

"Right. So are there more... what did you say you were called again? Time something?"

"Time Lord," the Doctor corrected him from the base of the tower, which had begun to whirr a little.

"A bit conceited, isn't it?

"Hey, I didn't make it up. I'm just the Doctor."

"Mm-hmm. So how many more of you are there? Or is it just you and your friend?"

The Doctor paused from wiring his contraption for a moment, eyebrows raised in surprise. "Spot on, actually. How'd you guess?"

Michael shrugged. "Just a feeling I had." He recognised loneliness when he saw it – or, at the least, someone who was desperate to avoid it. "So what is she like, really?"

"Didn't I tell you already?"

"I don't do riddles, Doctor." He paused for a second, studying the Time Lord as he beavered away at the device. That the Doctor was being deliberately evasive was obvious; it was why he was interested. "Did you two grow up together or something?"

"Amy and I? No, no," the Time Lord answered, momentarily distracted. "We grew up on completely different planets, at different times. Not to mention the fact that I'm a little older than her."

Michael poked his head around the device, curious. "Oh? How much older?"

"Oh, just a little," the Doctor replied casually, running his sonic up and down the length of the device. In response, the whirring increased in volume by several notches, with the tower-like structure beginning to spin like a drill. Michael jerked back in mild alarm, but the Doctor seemed rather pleased with himself.

"And off we go," he declared brightly, confirming his satisfaction. "Let's go and find ourselves a time machine!"

* * *

><p>"What are you doing?"<p>

Amy didn't so much as look up. "What does it look like?"

Kate rolled her eyes. "You've been packing for a few hours at least. You've even skipped lunch." Amy had disappeared to her room the moment they'd returned to the real world, only coming out to raid the kitchen for canned food. And wine. Most of which was now gone.

Amy shrugged and continued to cram tinned food into one of two camping rucksacks. Given the amount of stuff already packed into them, Katherine suspected some sort of bigger-on-the-inside trickery going on.

"Not hungry."

"You haven't eaten for ages," Katherine pointed out.

"Yeah, 'cos I'm not hungry."

"Amelia..." There was a hint of exasperation in Kate's voice.

"Shut up. You're not my mother."

Kate pinched her nose – the Time Lady really could be a hard-case at times. "Fine. So what are you doing?"

"We've been in one place for too long," Amy told her brusquely. "We need to leave."

"It looks as if you're planning a hike," Kate mused, planting herself on the bed next to her friend, surrounded by tinned food, folded clothing and little odds and ends she didn't recognise at all.

"I can't take a shuttle, I'd get blown from the sky in an instant," She reached over and grabbed a map she'd found in the sitting room. "There's a spaceport not far from here. It shouldn't take more than a day or two's walk to get there."

"That's bloody dangerous, Ames," Kate warned, using the nickname she'd concocted that morning. Though Amy hadn't said anything to the effect, she couldn't mistake the odd flash of, well, _distaste_ that rippled through her mind every time she'd called her by that name she'd adopted. _Amy_.

It had only started recently – in fact, it had only started this morning, once Amy had cried into her shoulder for a good twenty minutes. After that, she'd smiled sheepishly, mumbled a thank-you-for-being-here-for-me and then carried on as if nothing had happened. It was more than a little jarring – and more to the point, wrong, because Kate could _tell_ that something had happened, inside, where it counted.

Katherine didn't have the knowledge, the insight – hell, she just wasn't smart enough full stop to understand what was going on inside Amy's mind. That she was alien didn't help, but a lot of it was simply because she was Amy. Nonetheless, she'd never really bought the flirty-kissogram thing (mostly because Amy had never tried it on _her_) and she'd always suspected that the ginger was a little more messed up than she'd let on. Now she was convinced.

She'd sort of wondered – how had Amy got through those years, convinced she was mad and stupid, consigned to a dull, pointless life in a village she quietly despised? _By not thinking about it,_ Katherine now knew. _Can't do that any more, though. A_ll those years of thinking Amy was stupid and mad... was it that much of a surprise that part of Amy had started to believe her?

She shook her head, clearing her mind of those thoughts. Why was she thinking about this? She had problems of her own, and besides, if she ever voiced her worries, Amy would shoot her down for being stupidly melodramatic. _Back on point. _"So this is your plan? Walk to the nearest town and hope to catch a flight somewhere?"

Amy didn't miss the scepticism. "I'm not asking you to come along. If you want, get Iverson to take you straight back to the TARDIS. It'll be safer there."

"You know what I'm going to say."

"And I know that you're going to end up dead if you keep sticking around me," Amy countered.

"In the long run, we're all dead," Kate muttered, recalling one of her favourite quotes. "Look, I'm not a runner, Amelia. That's not what I do."

"I wasn't asking you whether you wanted to or not," Amy pointed out.

Kate folded her arms across her chest and glared at her. Didn't Amy know enough about her by now to know what her answer would be? And why the hell couldn't Amy look at her? "And yet you're packing two bags."

"Well, I might not be hungry but if you're going to tag along, I'd rather not listen to you moaning all day." Amy's eyes shot up to hers for the first time, a wry smirk on her face. "Come on. Help me pack and we'll be off."

Kate smiled, laughed, and shuffled over to join her friend. "Guess you know me a bit better than I thought."

Amy punched her companionably on the shoulder. "And don't you forget it."

* * *

><p>"Six-point-oh-four-two!"<p>

"Four-three?" The Doctor glanced up, voice muffled by the pens he was keeping between his teeth on top of the several in his hand.

"Four-two!"

"Right, sorry." He took out the pens from his mouth, placing them on the large, unfolded map he had below him.

Michael ignored him, continuing to concentrate on the gyrating device before him and the stop-watch in his hand. The task was simple enough – measure how long it took for the spinning tower the Doctor had constructed to, well, spin. The idea was simple enough – the tracking device was coupled to the quantum beacon link Stanley had set up for them. The closer they got, the stronger the signal, the faster the tower spun around. Take enough measurements and they'd have a fix on where exactly the beacon was. Simple. If a little weird.

Another ten revolutions of the spinning... thing, and another measurement later, he glanced down at the Doctor, who was busy drawing large, oblong shapes all over the map.

"There!" The Time Lord jammed his finger down at a spot on the map, exclaiming in delight as he did so. "Or, at least, somewhere around there. There plus or minus a bit of a walk and a five quid taxi ride."

"So is that where your friend is?"

"Possibly. Maybe. Almost certainly where we'll find a few bread crumbs, though."

"Bread crumbs?" Michael wasn't exactly clued-in when it came to traditional Earth fairytales.

"Never mind."

Less than ten seconds later, a jolt ran through the shuttle as it suddenly tipped downwards. Startled by the craft's change of direction, Michael had to grab onto the nearest object to regain his balance, and henceforth had to be careful not to be whacked on the face by the metal rods attached to the tower.

"Ah." The Doctor too had been a little surprised, though he quickly regained his poise. "We must be close. Time does fly when you're having fun, eh?"

"Close to where?"

"You'll see."

Half an hour later, and Michael was standing outside the shuttle, parked by a riverbank in a lush, thick forest of some kind. Unfortunately, despite having reached their destination – a large blue box of some description – he was none the wiser as to _what_ their destination actually was.

"Right, so what exactly am I seeing here?"

Michael looked the deep blue box up and down, eyebrows raised. He couldn't help but glance sideways nervously either, as if some terrifying demon was threatening to break out of the treeline and strike him down. His complexion had turned a rather sickly green colour when the Doctor had mentioned that he'd parked his 'time machine' in the Phi Forest. The last of the one-vast subtropical reserves, the place was spoken in rather hush-hush tones now, with few who dared going in ever making it out again.

But the Doctor had laughed off the concerns, waving them away. And either way, it sure beat paper-pushing at the dull end of a hospital. Mind you, this big blue box was not exactly he saw in his mind eye when he thought about what a time machine might look like.

"Like, is this it?"

The Doctor stopped and turned to face him, having been busy taking scans of the general area with his sonic. He had a quizzical look on his face, as if somewhat surprised by the question.

"'Course it is. Why, what were you expecting?" He pocketed the sonic and stood against the TARDIS, leaning on it, eyebrows raised.

"Well, you know. I was thinking that your time machine would be a bit..." Michael decided not to finish the sentence, knowing that even in his head it sounded churlish.

The Doctor, however, just smiled and clicked his fingers.

"Bigger?"

* * *

><p>"So I'm pretty sure I've seen this before," Jack commented as they reached their destination. It was morning in the forest, though still rather gloomy owing to the thick, bone-chilling fog. He wondered for a moment how Machariam was keeping up, away from the warmth hubs deep in the forest at the colony, but he decided not to ask. The repticore <em>seemed<em> to be doing fine, at least, protected by its thick, scaly hide.

"I imagine you would," the repticore replied with an amused tone, "You were here a week ago, no?"

They had come to the same bend in the river where the Doctor and Jack had first been trapped in the forcefield. Or at least so he thought – they all looked basically the same. Apparently _those_ were actually repticore inventions that had been copied and repurposed by Earthsphere Maintenance. Or something. He'd asked curiously about those strange, heat-emitting warmth hubs he'd seen in the forest too, as his instincts hinted at them being somehow linked to just how messed up time seemed to be around this place, but he'd only got a paint-stripping glare for his troubles.

Either way, they were here now, standing in front of the same 'tree' that the Doctor had taken such a keen interest in days before. It still had a bark panel removed, exposing the hollow interior, with the centre still occupied by those glowing tubes which extended down and out of sight.

"What is this thing, anyway? Oxygen machine?"

"No, though the rest of the trees here are. There are enough here to provide air for an entire planet, but for the most part their main purpose, I suspect, is to convince anyone who cares to look that there is nothing to see here."

"What do you mean? I thought the equaliser field was common knowledge here."

"Almost no one knows how it really works. Think, Captain – thought to electricity? Do you really think your thoughts alone are powerful enough to power tools and machines? Wishful thinking at its finest, Captain, as I told you."

"Then what? I'm still not quite across what it has to do with time travel."

"As I _tried_ to explain, Harkness," Machariam began in equal parts exasperation and amusement, "Time is not just a line. Time is akin to a cosmic ocean, flowing, uneven, with an inherent essence and energy. Accessing the Vortex requires that energy."

"And there's none around here, because the equaliser field has taken it all?" Jack may not have the intellect of his two Time Lord friends, but he was sharp enough.

"Precisely."

"So what does that have to do with you? Or are you lot pining to see the universe?" He asked with a wry smile.

"I'm about two hundred years old, Captain," Machariam reminded him with a gravelly undertone. He certainly _sounded_ like he was a few hundred years old, unlike the Doctor who half the time sounded like he was about twelve. "I've seen enough of the universe to last a lifetime."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "I'll remind you who you're talking to."

"But of course." The gold-scaled repticore moved forward and traced his claw down the central column. At once, the ambient light filling the hollow interior changed from a light blue to an angry scarlet. "There. It's active now, so you should be able to get down."

Jack frowned, puzzled at how, well, _easy_ this all seemed. "Hang on – if you're able to activate the teleport, why can't you go down yourself?"

"It's DNA-locked, human access only. I would think that it is simple enough, however. Just disable the field. Your machine will be refuelled once it has access to ambient time energy, and we will be long gone."

He raised an eyebrow. "You lot can time-travel?"

"We have our methods."

"Uh-huh." He stepped towards the tree and placed his palm on the central column. It heated at his touch – a good thing, he supposed. "So, if all goes to plan, when I come back I won't be attacked by any more of your scaly friends?"

The giant lizard bared its rows of teeth in what was presumably amusement – though it only made chills run up Jack's spine.

"If."

The gold-scaled repticore pressed his claw to the symbol, and a sphere of crimson light surrounded Jack as the teleporter activated.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<br>**


	37. A Walk in The Woods

__**I do something very mean to Kate and Amy at the end. Sorry.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.<em>  
>~ Lily Tomlin<p>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 37. A Walk In The Woods: 1 April 2011<strong>

What started out as a tense, rushed exercise to try and get ready for a trek to god-knew-where for god-knew-what-reason soon turned into the most fun Kate and Amy had had in ages. When they weren't comparing clothes and commenting on potential outfits they were swapping jokes and stories, giggling and laughing away as girls their age tended to do.

Amy had fallen silent mid-story (something about a party which had gone hilariously wrong a few years back), however, as if distracted by something. Puzzled by the unexpected silence, Kate stuck her head back in the door to see the Time Lady with eyes firmly shut, rubbing her temple as if she had a headache of some kind.

"Ames?"

"What?" Amy's eyes snapped open, immediately finding Kate and flashing a smile. "Oh, yeah. Sorry. Distracted."

"Uh-huh. You reckon we'll need this?" Kate asked, holding up with a roll of cloth bandages.

"Uh, I guess," Amy equivocated. She hadn't bothered with anything except clothes, food, and a tent. She didn't believe in too much preparation – she hadn't even changed out of her nightie on her first trip in the TARDIS, after all. And if everything went right, it wouldn't take more than a day or two to get to where she wanted. "Why d'you need it?"

Kate gave her a half-frown, half-glare. "Well, it'll be hard to get anywhere if I sprain my ankle or something."

"If you sprain your ankle a bit of cloth won't help you, moron," Amy pointed out.

Kate furrowed her brow a little. "Fair point, but I'll take it anyway. Could come in handy."

"Wannabe doctor, you are," Amy muttered as Kate shoved it into her rucksack, compressing the contents as best she could. Amy had done something to it so it was far lighter than it looked, but it was still stupidly bulky.

"Give me six months and I won't just be a wannabe doctor," Kate joked, pulling the flap of her rucksack shut and tightening the straps as much as she could. Amy had already finished up with hers, and was now affixing her sword to her belt. She frowned at Kate, a little perturbed.

"What d'you mean?"

"What? Oh." It had only been a throwaway joke, Kate hadn't been expecting to explain it. "Never mind that now, it's not important."

Amy arched her eyebrows, cocking her head in curiosity. "Really?"

"Really."

In another time, Amy would have pushed and needled until she'd found out what she wanted... but that was another time, another _her._

"Fine." _For now, anyway. _

Having finished with the sword and her bag, Amy then took a small plastic earpiece out of her pocket, affixing it beneath her right ear after brushing her thick ginger hair away. Kate paused for a moment from her own packing to gaze at it curiously.

"What's that?"

"Neural inhibitor," Amy replied, fiddling with the earpiece. There a sharp hissing noise and Amy winced for a few seconds – she'd thought long and hard about an alternative method, but there wasn't one, so direct injection it was. It also meant that she couldn't take it out – not without severing the minuscule nano-wires that were now feeling their way directly into her brain. Then again, she'd had ear piercings worse than this.

Kate, of course, was oblivious to all of this. "Which does what?"

"What the name says it does. It'll stop people finding me by tracking my thoughts."

Oblivious didn't mean stupid. "Won't that diminish all your, y'know-"

"Powers?" Having finished fiddling with the inhibitor, Amy threaded the hairpin back into her hair, adopting her now-customary hairstyle, with much of her ginger hair lying sideways across the crown of her head before cascading down the right side of her face. It wasn't the most lavish or sexy look she'd ever had, but it'd do.

_Not like that shit matters now anyway._

"Ames?" Kate leaned forward, trying to catch the Time Lady's eye. Even with the inhibitor active, Kate could easily sense Amy's thoughts drifting.

"Oh – yeah, sorry." Amy shook her head, clearing her mind of the distractions. "What were you saying again?"

Kate clucked her tongue in mild irritation – smart though she was and always had been, Amy still hadn't lost her short attention span. "The inhibi-whatsit. Will it-"

"Maybe," Amy cut across her, pre-emptying the question. "It'll definitely damp it down a little, maybe a lot. Don't know."

A frown. "What, doesn't it bother you that you're basically crippling yourself?"

"Crippling?" Amy chuckled, a wry smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye. "Hardly. I'll still have everything I need psychically. Being able to remotely kill people with my mind isn't something I'll miss."

Kate already knew this, but it still made her stomach do a nasty somersault. "That's... comforting," she stated doubtfully.

"The whole idea is just to keep everything bottled up inside," Amy explained. "Best way to keep you safe."

"Gee, I'm touched."

"Don't even joke," Amy warned, no longer smiling. "You don't get it yet, just how-"

"No, Amelia, I do." Kate wasn't about to let her go off on one of her self-destructive spirals again. She took a deep breath before continuing, unflinchingly returning her friend's intense gaze. "I get it. And I'm still here, OK? You didn't run away when you realised how dangerous your life with the Doctor would be, and I'm not running now."

Amy stayed silent for a moment, her star-bright eyes boring into Katherine's. To the blonde, human girl felt like an examination, as if all her defences, everything keeping the outside world out were nothing, Amy just bulldozing through them.

"So you know?"

Kate hadn't expected her to say _that. _"Know what?"

"About the things I'm capable of. When did he tell you about... about me? About what happened to those Daleks?"

"Oh – well, ages ago." Kate replied warily, but she couldn't sense any change in the Time Lady's demeanour for once. No flashes of rippling, incalculable rage.

"So you knew this before you left the TARDIS with me?"

"Well, yeah."

"Even though you know how dangerous I was – and still am? You came with me, even though you know that I've got blood on my hands? And you're still coming with me now, even after what you know?"

"Of course. That's what friends do."

Before she could say another word, Amelia's arms were around her, the thick sheet of ginger hair burning against her cheek. It wasn't a tight embrace – awkward, even – but Kate knew, as she felt the double-heartbeat against her chest, that it said more than words ever could.

"Thank you, Katherine," the Time Lady whispered, breaking off to smile fondly at her, "for trusting me. Now hurry up and pack."

* * *

><p>As always, it was silent in the Undersphere. Dark as always, the only light the ephemeral golden glow from the a row of lights embedded into the perfectly smooth, black walls and the faint twinkling of the stars through the glass floor.<p>

It was this floor and those stars that were the first things on Jack's mind as he reappeared in the middle of a hallway in a flash of red. His first thought was that he'd turned up out in space, and he instinctively reached for the wall, his heart skipping a beat or two. Once he realised he was _not_ in the vacuum of deep space and standing on solid glass, he breathed again and tried to gather his surroundings.

He was in what seemed to be a network of corridors, based on how the passageway he was currently in branched off here and there, all with the same shiny, featureless black marble walls and golden lights.

He moved quietly down the corridor – there was no sign of anyone else here, but it paid to be discreet. He peeked around the corner into one of the adjoining corridors, but there was nothing he could see there – just more marble walls, more stars visible below.

"Brilliant," he grumbled to himself. "Teleported to a friggin' maze."

He looked up. The walls, as far as he could tell, were about two metres high and then just stopped, with nothing but air above them. There were no ceiling lights – hell, as far as he could tell, there was no ceiling in the first place. Just total, impenetrable darkness. He guessed that he was somewhere below Earthsphere – though given the fact that there were stars beneath him, 'below' was relative. Perhaps he really was out in deep space and he was trapped in a box, or perhaps gravity had decided to flip for the day.

He pinched his nose – trying to work out the mechanics of it all was already making his head hurt. Best to move on.

Moving on was difficult, however, as he had not the foggiest clue where he actually was. The corridors, he discovered, were all identical, and the adjoining rooms he found weren't exactly interesting. There was a toilet or two and a broom cupboard, that's all. He even checked the broom cupboard for hidden entrances and perception filters – but no, there were only brooms there.

_Where the hell is this place,_ he thought, as he stumbled upon another room, this one filled with bunk beds. Given the smell – a musty, thick odour – and the heavy layer of dust on every surface, he guessed that no one had been here for a while. He frowned – clearly, this place was meant for people, but he'd not seen nor heard a whisper of a soul since he'd been here. Quarters for the legions of workers who had built Earthsphere, perhaps?

He decided to keep looking, doubling back to where he guessed he'd came, but he soon found himself lost again. He discovered yet more empty, dusty rooms full of bunk beds. _Just how many people_, he wondered, _used to live here?_ Either way, this was getting stupid – he wasn't here to investigate.

_Get in. Find the controls. Disable the field. Get out._

Well, he'd gotten in, but now that he thought about it, he had no idea what an equaliser field really _was_ (only what it did), let alone how to get back to the 'surface'. And besides, he couldn't do any of that until he found the damn thing. Which he hadn't now, in several hours of fruitless searching.

"Come on," he half-shouted to nothing in particular, having come across yet another broom cupboard. "Where is this damned control room?"

He sighed in exasperation. _Couldn't something just point the damn way for once? Or turn on the lights?_ It was a stupid, desperate plea, but he was definitely desperate now. And tired. And bored.

And to his immense surprise, something did.

At once, the row of lights on the walls beside him turned from their gentle golden glow to a bright white. Not all of them, though – only on some of the walls. As if the lights were pointing a path for him to go down. As if someone, something had heard his unspoken thoughts...

_Of course._ So obvious. That equaliser field again, thought to... something or other. He set off down the corridors with renewed purpose, his way illuminated by the very thing he was trying to destroy.

* * *

><p>"You are taking the piss."<p>

The Doctor had a grin on his face that Michael could only place somewhere between smug and genuinely elated – the man looked like an overgrown in a nine year old, the way he pranced and danced around the platform surrounding the hexagonal central column.

The platform which, naturally, was three times the width of the box that contained it. Sitting in the middle of a room at least fifty feet wide. All inside an inconspicuous blue box on a riverbank. It was just... _yeah._

Insane?

Ridiculous?

Surreal, maybe? He was, truly and absolutely, speechless.

"Should I even bother asking how...?"

"Multidimensional compactification of a twisted spacetime field onto a vortex fibre. Make sense?"

Michael had to resist the strong temptation to roll his eyes. "Oh, yeah. Clear as mud."

The Doctor gave a short, barking laugh before placing his arm around Michael's back and leading him towards the central column.

"Okay. Imagine a giant piece of paper. Now fold it up until it fits into a little box. Like a paper crane. Origami, if you like, which reminds me, I'm booked for a lesson on Thursday... but anyway. Paper crane. Getting the picture?"

Michael nodded.

"Well, it's actually nothing like that." The Doctor patted him on the back before darting back to the console. "But never mind."

This time Michael _did _roll his eyes. But he held his tongue... somehow.

"Now," the Doctor continued sharply, tweaking the knobs on a small screen suspended from the ceiling, "If we were lucky, we'd be able to find Amy by her sonic. But we're not."

"Sonic-?"

"Screwdriver." And to emphasise the point, the Doctor flicked out his own, running it over the console to no discernible affect. Michael decided not to inquire more.

"Anyway, I thought you knew where she was? You said that tower thing was tracking device."

"Sort of. Partially. To an extent, yes. You did leave it turned on, didn't you?" The Doctor gave a brief inquiring glance in his direction before returning to fiddling with the console. "Good, good. Don't put down the camera, by the way. We'll need it."

"For what?"

"You'll see soon enough. I suggest you make yourself presentable, by the way.'

Michael raised an eyebrow. "Says the guy in the bow-tie."

"Of course. They're cool."

"I'm sure," Michael replied dryly. "OK. So where is she, then?"

"No idea. But we'll find out soon-ish."

"Stanley said-"

"Yes, yes, and we'll get there soon enough, but I have a funny feeling she isn't there _now_. And there's no time quite like the present. Now, camera."

Michael rolled his eyes once again and brought up the camera, blinking on the record button as he brought the camera up to eye level. Through the camera's screen, he watched the Doctor adjusting one or two more knobs on the console before the very picture he was looking at was replicated on the massive circular screen on the side of one wall.

"Alright, Houston, we are good to go!" The Doctor exclaimed, clapping his hands in obvious delight. "And I'm amazed I actually got a chance to say that again. Now, how do I look?" He turned to face Michael, straightening his bowtie and tweed jacket in an attempt to look more presentable. In his terms, anyway.

Michael's struggle to find the appropriate response must have come across as silent assent, because the Doctor's grinned simply broadened and he spun back to the console, typing in a command on a typewriter that Michael suspected had come from a museum somewhere.

"So, Michael, ever planned on being on TV?"

"Not really, no." Michael paused for a moment, the implications of the Doctor's question starting to hit home. "Hang on-"

The Doctor mashed his thumb down on the enter key before he could even finish his sentence.

* * *

><p>It had not been a productive day in Stanley's world. He was trying his best to concentrate on his job – this municipal swimming pool wouldn't plan itself, after all – but to say he was distracted was an understatement.<p>

Ever since the Doctor and Michael had left – and cleared out a great deal of old junk they'd found lying around the place, for what purpose he had no idea – he'd tried to clear his mind of the doubts they'd raised, but it was impossible.

How else was he supposed to react when a man he'd read and heard so much about, whom he tried to emulate in his own small, modest way, had come in and placed such doubts in his mind?

This had been his dream, and his alone. He'd been warned by Iverson that he was being played, that someone was selling him a line. That there was no way the strange temporal anomalies were natural, that the equalizer field really shouldn't have been growing in strength in parts where it wasn't supposed to be, leaving only a few 'enclaves' of field-free land left on his enormous artificial planet.

He'd been so utterly devoted to his dream that he'd failed to notice the rot on the trees for the splendour of the forest.

He shook his head and sighed. He was getting precisely nowhere with this. Best to take a break. He sauntered back downstairs to his living room, plopped himself heavily on the couch, sinking into the comforting, soft leather as he flicked on the TV for a few hours of mindless entertainment.

It only took five seconds for him to shoot upright again.

"_What the hell-?"_

* * *

><p>It was, more or less, déjà vu.<p>

Having totally exhausted the archives on Amy Pond, with the only other knowledge he'd gleaned being that she'd once had a human fiancée, he moved onto the third and by far most confusing of the three names at the centre of this bizarre puzzle.

Windcatcher. He hadn't been lying when he'd told Amy that he didn't have a clue who that was, and he'd been around – far moreso than her. Apart from a vague reference to a race called the Valari that had been almost extinguished in the Time War, and a planet called Valaren (he didn't miss the connection) that had literally gone missing millions of years before at the apex of its glory, there was zero information on him. Zip. Nada.

Even the _name_ made no sense. It was if someone had deliberately chosen something to describe a complete impossibility – how did one _catch the wind?_ It wasn't as if the wind something solid, easily touched and grasped like a brick or a ball. To _catch – _by which he assumed meant control or contain – something as ephemeral and, well, uncontrollable as the _wind_...

On second thoughts, he was probably over-thinking things.

_Right._ None of this was going to help Amy in the here and now. He could ask his brother, of course, but what would he know? After all, whatever and whoever this Windcatcher character was, he wasn't doing this for personal reasons. Who would hold a grudge against Amy Pond? No. Instinct told him that whoever was behind the Windcatcher – and therefore the people the Time Lady should _really_ be worrying about – were the same people who had bankrolled Earthsphere's construction in the first place.

But the fool was so damn obsessed by his dream, his utopia, that-

"Mr Blood?"

He started out of his reverie, seeing his secretary sticking his head through the door.

"Not now, Louise, I-"

"Really, Mr Blood. You need to see this."

He gazed at the woman carefully, noting her paler-than usual cheek and wide eyes. Whatever it was, it had clearly startled her. Well, he could spare a few minutes. He got up and followed her back into the office, where he could hear the TV on.

He frowned a little – this time of day, there'd only be cheesy, soporific soap operas and infomercials on for the lazy and bored, so why was she- "What the _hell?_"

A tall, brown-haired man in a tweed jacket and bowtie was busy chattering away to the camera, which was clearly handheld based on how unsteady it was. They were in some sort of golden room, with a central platform surrounding a hexagonal console of some kind. It looked precisely like something he'd found in a paper he'd read just this morning, when he was reading about-

"-the TARDIS, or Time And Relative Dimension In Space to use the long-form," the man on-screen continued. "Time machine, or space-time machine if you want to be specific. Anyway, allow me to introduce myself. I'm the Doctor, spaceman and bow-tie extraordinare. This-" he gestured towards the camera "-is my new friend, Michael, who seems to be having unexplained difficulties in holding a camera straight."

The picture, which had been slowly rotating to the left, suddenly righted itself, to a chuckle from the Doctor.

"Where did you find this?" Iverson asked in a low voice.

"I don't know. It was just on when I flicked it on, and when I tried to change-" Louise picked up the remote, flicking through the channels. Every single one showed the same picture, the same golden room, the same bow-tie wearing Time Lord.

Because it was instantly clear that this wasn't just _a_ doctor, this was _the_ Doctor, Oncoming Storm and supposedly last of the Time Lords.

"Anyway. I thought that, since we all love adventures so much – well, I do, at least – we might go have one today. I'm standing here, today, in the place you call the Phi Forest – well, OK, _I'm_ technically not, but the TARDIS is, but who's counting? Anyway, I'm lead to believe that this place is off-limits to you folk, because of big evil nasty lizard people who will come out and attack you if you get too close.

"So I have a plan to enliven everyone's Monday afternoon, because all our Mondays could do with some dressing up. The plan is simple – run into the forest, meet said lizard people, and see what they say. Sounds like fun, eh?"

Given the way the picture trembled after that, Iverson guessed that the unnamed Michael disagreed heartily.

"Oh, come on, Michael. It'll be fine, trust me, they're quiet lovely folk once you get down to it. Apart from the claws... and the eating... and the poison-laced spines are rather unpleasant too – but apart from that, nicest guys in the universe. Anyway, that'll be in an hour or two, so stay tuned for that. Oh, and..."

The Doctor's demeanour suddenly stiffened, his eyes flaring as he took a singular step towards the camera. A small step, but one that made his frame, his presence, seem to fill the entire screen.

"If you're watching this, wherever you are, I'm coming for you, Amelia Pond. Hold on; no matter however hard, however far, I will _find you._ So sit tight. Doctor out."

The image faded to black – though not before Iverson had marched out of the room, his mind suddenly fixed with a singular desire to get home and tell his Time Lady friend the good news.

* * *

><p>It didn't take long for Jack to lose faith in whatever mystical force was guiding him using the lights. He'd been on the move, following the lights, for at least an hour now. Maybe two – he wasn't quite sure. He reminded himself to get a watch that wasn't just his vortex manipulator one day.<p>

After so long being led all around the place by the white lighting, however, he still hadn't come across anything unusual or interesting. No control panels, no levers, nothing. Nothing but empty, unused and dilapidated rooms. It was truly bizarre – clearly _someone_ had once lived here, in fact many someones, but who? And why did they leave?

He shook his head – he was getting distracted again. _Get in. Destroy the field. Get out._

He headed around a corner, still being lead by the white lighting, when suddenly his foot caught on something on the glass floor and he tripped, faceplanting and getting a fine view of the starry sky below. Spluttering and swearing in equal measure, he looked behind him to see what had tripped him up.

"What...?"

It was a tree root. A dark-brown, bark-covered, gnarled, honest-to-god tree root. "What the hell...?" He whispered, hardly able to believe his eyes. He doubled back, reaching out to feel the root with trembling fingers, as if it were an illusion, as if it would disappear if he dared touch it.

Instead, his fingers jerked backwards the instant they came into contact with the root. He shouted in alarm, eyes wide and panting. He knew an electric shock when he felt one, and the white-hot jolt that had run up his arm when his fingers had brushed over the bark was unmistakeable. He certainly hadn't felt anything like that when his thick boots had jammed into it, as if it really were...

He dived into his greatcoat pockets, searching for an object to test the theory that had suddenly occurred to him. Most of them were empty – to his surprise, nothing but an old plastic torch and bits of paper there. They hadn't been empty the last time he'd checked, which granted was several days ago. But he'd definitely remembered there being stuff in there, such as pens, whistles, a pair of binoculars, and-

_Shit._ Amy's diary. The one he'd picked up from the wheelchair. Where had _it_ gone? He hoped it wasn't important, but something told him that such a hope was very much misplaced. Well, in that case, he could only hope that when she found out she didn't notice or care. He searched through the rest of the pockets, but the little black book was most certainly gone. _Damn. Must have dropped it in the forest._

It didn't matter though, because after about ten' seconds further searching, he found what he was originally looking for – a cartridge of ammunition that he kept around just-in-case. He stood up, held the cartridge right over the root, arm outstretched whilst standing as far away as he could, and let it fall.

It exploded on impact with a deafening bang and a shower of sparks, making Jack jump back in alarm. _Maybe not such a good idea._ But it seemed to confirm his theory – this tree root was electrified, or at least had some sort of energy running through it

_Thought to electricity._ Could it be? He looked closer – the root snaked along the floor on the side of a passageway, but not down the corridor marked by the white lighting. He had a choice – follow the path set out by whatever invisible force had been guiding him, or dance to the beat of his own drum and find the source of the electrified root?

Well. Not much of a choice where Jack Harkness was concerned. He lit the little plastic torch and set off, following the twisting, gnarled wood down the corridors beneath the paradise world.

* * *

><p>"So where are we going, exactly?"<p>

"Town called Esther's Falls, about twenty miles from here," Amy replied from behind Kate. "Has a spaceport, and hopefully a way of getting back to the TARDIS undetected."

"Right."

They remained silent for a while after that, as the two girls marched through the sparse woodland populating the space between the hills.

"So why _did_ he leave?" Kate asked again, after a minute or so of silence.

"Huh?" Amy had been lost in her own thoughts for a moment. "Oh. That."

They'd been walking for a good few hours now, and had already put a fair bit of distance between them and the villa, which had done wonders for Amy's mood. To Kate's surprise, she'd been in front most of the way, owing to her friend's ongoing slight limp.

The first mile or two had been tense, with not a word spoken as Amy scanned her surroundings hawk-like, ready to pick off any potential threats. That hadn't been fun, with Kate still deeply apprehensive about going into the open, and Amy in a downright dangerous state of mind. But as time went on and nothing happened except an encounter with some rather bemused rabbits when they'd accidentally stumbled into their warren, Kate began to relax a little. Soon they were chatting away as if they really were just taking a walk in the woods.

"The engines were dephasing," Amy replied lightly, flicking a leaf off her jacket. "He had to rephase them with a quick trip into the future."

Kate frowned. "What, twelve years is quick?"

"He didn't mean it to be. It was supposed to be five minutes."

"And it ended up twelve years."

"You do know how bad he is at flying, right?"

"Not really, no," Kate admitted. "Has he apologised?"

"He doesn't need to." Amy replied behind her, firmly and with a note of pride in her voice. "He's my Doctor, I know he won't ever try to hurt me."

"No, just accidentally hurt you," Kate commented airily, moving on ahead through the leaf-covered ground. Though it wasn't _quite_ what she had wanted to be doing during her time on the TARDIS, she had loved walking through sparse woodlands just like this on crisp, clear afternoons just like this with her father back in the day. She hadn't done it in a while, though, what with... _well._

"Hiding something?"

Kate halted on the spot, spinning around to see the Time Lady smirking at her.

"Excuse me?"

If anything, Amy's smirk widened. "Oh come on. You think I wasn't going to notice you hiding that stuff about your life before? Fat chance. Even with the inhibitor you think as if you need to shout the whole time. So you gonna spill the beans or not?"

Kate glowered briefly at her before tightening the straps on her rucksack and turning her back to her, determinedly setting the pace again. "You've got your secrets. I'll keep mine."

"Secrets are bad for you, Katherine," Amy replied in a low, quiet voice which nevertheless carried easily to the blonde's ears. "Unless you want to have an exquisitely painful conversation explaining why you have to break up with your boyfriend."

Amy's voice was still feather-light, but Kate heard the sting, the subtle undertone of grief and pain. Amy might have shut off the direct link between their minds, but there was still that tiny fragment of her that wasn't mortal, wasn't human like her. A little piece of her that _understood._ "Still hurts, huh?"

There was no answer. And there was nothing through the mindlink either... though, come to think of it, when _had_ Amy shut off the link? She'd barely even noticed how the feeling she'd gotten used to in the last few days, that ceaseless thrum of activity deep within her brain, had simply disappeared.

_It must have only happened, like, minutes ago..._

But she wasn't about to second-guess the Time Lady. And, to be honest, there was probably a good reason Amy was hiding her memories behind that shield of hers.

"Right. Well, at least you've got the Doctor. And assuming we get off this damn rock, it's not as if you can't ever see him again, eh Ames? Though you two still owe me a trip to somewhere nice first," she joked. It was probably unwise to start trading barbs with Amy again, as Amy tended to have a lethal comeback ready and waiting, but that was all part of the fun.

This time, however, it didn't come. _Odd._ She stopped, turning her head slightly as her brow creased. "Don't tell me you're all offended by that and going silent treatment on me. The Doctor did basically promise, you know."

Still nothing. "Are you even listening to me? Amy? What's happen-_Amelia!_"

She'd turned around as she spoke, and the moment she did so the reason for the ginger's silence became clear. Amy was crumpled against a tree, holding her head in her hands as if she was afraid it was about to explode. Mind cleared instantly of whatever conversation they'd been having, Katherine raced over, asking – shouting, really – if she was OK.

"Dandy," Amy ground out between gritted teeth, her breaths heavy and uneven. "I thought these headaches were supposed to have gone-_aah!_"

She was only aware of it for the briefest moment, but for a fraction of a second after Amy's mouth had opened on a scream, Katherine knew. She knew what Amy had been hiding behind that cool facade of hers, the reason she'd shut off their mindlink. There had been a storm brewing inside the altered brain of Amy's, and despite her best efforts, she'd finally cracked.

Images, memories, emotions, flashes of a life long gone and a past half-buried crashed into Katherine, completely overwhelming her. For a brief moment, she understood what she was seeing.

Then she couldn't understand anything at all.

All she could hear, all she could sense was the sound of screaming, her own, her friend's, her mind's, all intermingling as the storm broke within her. She fell to the ground, eyes staring blindly upwards, mouth agape on a soundless scream, dazzled by the infinite brightness that was burning her from inside-out. She couldn't see, couldn't breathe, couldn't feel anything but everlasting, impossible pain, like a million hot knives being driven into her...

A break in the screaming, the sound of her name...

...And utter darkness.

* * *

><p>The cleaners had gone home for the evening, but they still left the central computers on. Stanley often liked to check on things at the gigantic touch-table during the night if he felt like it. So despite the fact that he wasn't clearly wasn't in – he'd left without warning or explanation that afternoon after the bizarre broadcast on TV – they left it on standby anyway.<p>

Anyone walking it would hardly have noticed, anyway, as the only indicator that the machine was on was a little standby light in a corner. But about an hour before sunset, the machine unexpectedly whirred into life. The table flickered on, popping up its requisite standby messages.

For a moment it would have looked decidedly odd, the machine turning itself on for no apparent reason. But soon the reason became clear as a blinking red window opened on the table. The psychic spike alert.

It wasn't the first such spike – it was the second. The first had been several days before. At the time, it had been dismissed as a bug, because there was surely no such thing as a category seven spike, was there? A one-off, surely.

This one, however, was even stronger, miles over the six-point threshold and coming from the sensors at a town called Esther's Falls. One was incredible, two was simply extraordinary.

Three...

But it didn't stop there. Soon the screen was filled with blinking red windows, indicating hitherto unheard-of psychic spikes, enormous leaps in the energy of the minds the sensors were attuned to. Anyone paying close attention to the location of the spikes (which no one was) would have noticed how they seemed to emanate outwards in a circle, centred somewhere near Esther's Falls. It was less of a psychic spike than a bomb, a wave of energy, flooding the sensors and triggering alarm after alarm.

Hard, then, to write this one off as a mere bug.

Or perhaps not. After all, it had only lasted a second or so – incredibly short by any reasonable measure. In a flash, the alarms had all disappeared, and the world had gone back to normal. No spikes, no psychic bombs, nothing.

And no one here to see it, anyway.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<strong>


	38. Saving A Friend

**You know that awkward moment when the show starts exploring exactly the same themes as you from a completely different angle? Yeah. That.**

**Suffice to say that you should be on the lookout for a Power of Three quote in the next few chapters.**

**A warning: I do a bit of jump-forward at the start, and then a jump back.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 38. Saving A Friend: 1-2 April 2011<strong>

Of all the types of shielding the ancient time machine had built into it – temporal, physical, psychic – it was quite stunningly poor in blocking sound.

The noise of the commotion outside easily drifted through the thin wooden doors, the chaos audible over the metronomic whirring of the Time Rotor in the centre. Still, it wouldn't be hard to hold a conversation inside, even if one's voice had to be raised a little.

Once the doors were open, however, that became impossible. Not unless you were mere feet from the person you were trying to talk to and yelling at the top of your voice at them. Which the Doctor was.

"Inside, _now!_"

The Time Lord burst through the doors cradling a limp, unconscious body in his arms. Leaping to the side to avoid streaks of gunfire, he lay the body on the floor to the side of the doors.

As for the other girl...

"_Amy!"_

A second later, a ginger streak flashed through the doors as the Time Lady backed her way inside, sword still raised and gun still blazing. The moment she was through the doors, the Doctor slammed them shut with his back, locking them with trembling hands.

They could still hear the commotion outside – now more muffled yells rather than gunfire – but for a moment there was peace, as they looked each other in the eye for the first time in over a week. Blazing emerald met stormy ocean-blue, and the Doctor had to fight the urge to hold her tight, comfort her, tell her that everything was OK-

-but he couldn't. Because it wasn't.

"Doctor-"

"I know, Amy." In an instant, they were both by the immobile human girl's body. In the rush, the Doctor had placed Katherine at an unnatural angle against the wall, her arms lying awkwardly across her body and her neck tilted. She looked singularly awful, utterly broken. At least her eyes were closed.

Amy took her friend's cold, pale hand in her own. "Is she-"

"Not sure. Either way, we can't stay here." He whipped out his sonic screwdriver, his demeanour now business-like. "I'll have a look at her. Amy – Sisters of the Infinite Schism. You know where that is."

Amy still didn't move or let go, her eyes fixed on her friend, her – _handiwork._

"Amelia!"

Hearing her name, her real name, seemed to jolt Amy into life. She stood unsteadily, making her way to the console to pilot the time machine. It was a struggle, however, as her eyes were now so thick with tears that she could barely see where she was going.

The Doctor, meanwhile, lay Katherine down on her back so she at least looked more comfortable – but it was increasingly clear to him that comfort was a notion far, far beyond Katherine right now.

He opened her eyelids with his fingers, seeing only glassy, sightless orbs staring back at him. It only seemed to confirm the worst. He ran his sonic over the lifeless body, giving a low, fatigued sigh upon seeing the result.

"Oh, Amelia," he whispered to himself. "What have you done?"

* * *

><p><strong>Fourteen hours earlier<strong>

It was the crackling of the fire that brought Katherine back. She blinked her eyes open, seeing the flickering light bouncing off a dark, coruscated surface above her. As the world swirled into view, she realised she was lying in a small cabin of some kind. It had one room, with a single window opening onto the moonless sky beyond. She was lying on the floor, covered in her unzipped sleeping bag. In front of the small, merrily-crackling fire was a lone figure, her knees drawn into her chest and her still-brilliant ginger hair spilling over her shoulders.

"Amelia?" Her voice was weak, cracking as she spoke, owing to the dull pain in her chest.

Amy didn't move a muscle, simply staring into the fire. "Hey."

"What time is it?"

"About eight o'clock. You've been out for about three hours, before you ask."

"Huh. Could be worse." She moved to sit up, but as she tried to push herself upright with her arms the dull ache in her chest increased to a red-hot pain. She cried out, her arms toppling under her as she arched her body in pain.

Amy was over in a flash, placing one of her palms on Kate's chest and closing her eyes. Whatever she did, it worked a charm because Kate felt the pain die down almost instantly.

"Not a good idea to move," Amy chided her gently. "You've got a few cracked ribs, and I won't feel like numbing it every time."

"How'd you do that?" Kate asked, grateful and more than a little astonished. Her voice was a little stronger now, but not much.

"Nothing special. I just stopped your nerves sending pain signals to your brain. It's not exactly permanent, though, so you don't want to move around for a while."

Kate nodded, understanding. She looked up at her friend – and saw that Amy's round, pale face was covered in a sheet of mingled sweat and tears.

"You OK?"

Amy jerked back in slight surprise. "Me? No – I mean, yes! I'm fine." She flashed a smile that didn't even come close to reaching her eyes. "Compared to you, anyway."

"You look as if you've been crying for the last three hours."

"Really?" Amy rubbed her cheek with the back of her hand, smearing away some of the moisture still glistening there. "Well, I'm fine now."

Kate frowned, unconvinced. "So how exactly did I break my ribs? Did we get attacked?" Her last memory before she'd been out... well, she didn't exactly have _one_ last memory.

"Not yet. Your ribs..." Amy hesitated, averting her eyes slightly. "Yeah."

"Which means?" Kate wasn't in the mood for Amy's little diversions right now.

"I cracked them," Amy replied in a rush, the words tumbling out of her mouth, as if the speed would lessen their impact. "Sorry."

"How?"

"It's a long story..."

* * *

><p><em>The migraine had departed as suddenly as it arrived, building to a crescendo of incalculable intensity before vanishing.<em>

_She stands again, takes a few deep breaths, relaxes. That one hadn't been anywhere near as bad as the last._

"_Sorry about that. What were you saying again? I didn't quite catch-"_

_Her eyes rove, catching a glimpse of black boots below her. She follows them up to see her friend, one of her only friends, splayed out on the ground. Katherine's golden-blonde hair is askew, her mouth slightly agape and her eyes staring blankly into nothingness. She's fallen on her side, trapping one of her arms at an unnatural angle beneath her._

_Amelia's blood freezes, the world growing hazy around her._

"_No. NO! KATHERINE!"_

_She can't – she won't – this cannot happen. She will NOT let this happen._

_She chokes back the sob she knows is coming, rolls her friend onto her back. The eyes, still glassy, like two marbles, stare back lifelessly at her. Without question, it is one of the most horrifying things Amelia Pond will ever see._

_She feels with trembling fingers for her friend's exposed neck, searches for a pulse. There isn't one._

"_Wake up... please... wake up..."_

_Places an ear against her open mouth, hoping for a response, a breath. It doesn't come._

_Frantic, half-blind with fear, feeling her grief surge up, ready to choke her, she pulls out her sonic screwdriver, the gift from her imaginary friend who really, really needs to be here NOW. Right – bloody – now._

_She runs the device up and down the body, her breath hitching in her throat. She refuses to think about the word – that word. Dead. The Doctor wouldn't have thought about that word – he would have found a way – found something – anything._

_The Doctor wouldn't have let this happen._

"_Please... please..."_

_Her hand is shaking so much that she can barely even hold the sonic as she takes the reading, dreading the result._

_She takes one look._

_She screams. Oh, how she screams. A scream that reaches her very core, fills her being. _

_She hurls the sonic away, and gets to work. She can hear ribs cracking as her hands, filled with the strength of her almost-extinct race, pumps the blood around her friend's body. Like in that cave, that glittering crystal forest so many months ago, she refuses to believe it._

_She refuses to believe that she can't save her friend._

* * *

><p>"Amelia?"<p>

"What? Oh – sorry." This had been happening a lot lately, Amy finding her attention drifting to some weird, unpleasant place. She'd always prided herself on being able to shut out distractions, so it was immensely irritating to her that she was losing that skill now. She made a mental note to store that particular memory in her external storage later. "I was just a bit rough getting you to safety, that's all."

"Bit light on detail, there," Kate pointed out.

Amy sighed. "Does it really matter?"

"Well, considering that my ribs are broken, yeah."

"Cracked, not broken. You did the same to me not so long ago,"

"You're a Time Lady. Hardly makes a difference to you."

"And you'd know?" Amy inquired gently.

"Yes, funnily enough." Kate shot back testily. At once, she regretted using such a harsh tone, as Amy's eyes had flared up in a familiar, but nonetheless alarming fashion. She sighed. "Sorry, Ames. It's been a long day."

To her surprise, Amy brushed it off. "Hey. Doesn't matter. We're both safe, that's what counts."

"Yeah. Where are we, anyway?" Kate craned her neck, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever lay beyond the veil Amy had placed over their hiding place, but all she saw was impenetrable night-time.

"I found us a cabin while you were out. Thought it'd be a good place to set up camp."

"Fair enough." Despite what Amy had told her, Kate decided to nonetheless haul herself up into a sitting position. She could feel a twinge of protest from her chest, but she ignored it. "So how far are we from that spaceport? Esther's Falls?"

"We're just a few miles from the outskirts now."

"Outskirts?"

"It's a big town, according to the map. I was hoping to get to the spaceport this afternoon – but there's no way we can head there now with you being injured and the weather around." The sudden drop in temperature and rising winds hadn't been lost on Amy, and she was thankful that she'd managed to pick a place with a ceiling of some kind.

"Weather?"

"You'll see." Amy smiled warmly at her. "Get some sleep, Katherine. It's been a long day."

* * *

><p>The first reaction had been shock. Anger. Irritation.<p>

"Mummy, what's happened to the TV?" A little girl asked, as her favourite reality show had been replaced by something else entirely. Her dad had flicked through the channels, only to find that every single station was exactly the same.

A bow-tie wearing man, in a rapidly darkening forest, standing in front of a large blue box, yammering on about something or the other.

"-if we can find a power source somewhere in the forest," the on-screen man was saying, "I can kick-start the TARDIS and we can start looking for her."

"OK," a hidden voice replied. There was a brief pause, evidently so the hidden speaker could consider his next words. "Tell me about the girl."

"Girl? Her name's Amy. Didn't I already say that?"

"Maybe. So where's she from?"

"A funny little planet named Earth."

The speaker did a double-take – as did the millions watching. Earth.

_Earth._

That mystical, wonderful but long-lost homeland that they all dreamed of constantly. The one place they all longed to see, longed to be a part of, but couldn't. Earthsphere, detailed and flawless though it was, couldn't ever really match up to the real thing. It couldn't match up to their dreams of that long-lost blue planet that had fathered their species in the distant annals of time.

But here this man was, talking about someone from Earth. An actual person from Earth. They still existed, somehow. A time traveller, perhaps – it wasn't important. What was important was that the Doctor had now gotten everyone's attention.

Michael waiting a long while before making his next request. "Tell me about Earth."

* * *

><p>It had taken hours, but at last Jack felt like he was making progress. The twisted, snaking tree root had wound its way up and down, leading him on a merry chase through the dark corridors. Everywhere he'd went, the lights had followed him, insistently urging him to return the way he'd come. It was if they were trying to tell him to go anywhere but where he was going – which, of course, only spurred him on.<p>

Eventually, he'd come across a second tree root joining onto the first, amalgamating into a larger, twisting mass about the width of his arm. He'd broke into a broad grin when he'd seen that.

"Progress at last," he'd muttered.

He continued to follow the root as more and more twisting, brown branches latched onto it, leading him inexorably to the source.

He'd found that the roots and branches leading off them had begun to spark – sometimes into him, with unpleasant results. It seemed that any contact with metal or flesh caused electricity to flow _towards_ him, rather than away as it usually did. He guessed that short-circuiting flipped the polarity somehow, making everything go in reverse, and he had no intention of making himself the target of said 'everything'. Electrocution hurt.

It was one of these instances where he'd accidentally brushed the root with his hand, gotten the shock of his life and sworn up an irate storm that he'd finally worked it out. As he'd blown off steam, little arcs and bolts of electricity had run up and down the tree root next to him – turning his raw emotion into equally raw electricity.

So this, then, was the fabled equaliser field.

"Doesn't look like much of a field to me, though," he'd commented.

More astonishingly, when he'd been zapped by the root-slash-field, he'd found that his manipulator had blinked into life once more. And it worked, too – he'd done a quick flash-forward one metre forwards and one minute into the future to make sure. OK, it only had enough power for a few short-range jumps, but power was power. He'd had to beat down the temptation to do a merry jig after that – though he was alone, he still had a job to do. At least he had a way out now.

_Maybe if I flashed up to the Doctor and got him to Amy..._ he shook his head. A promise was a promise. And based on what Machariam had told him about the near-genocide of his people, it was a promise worth keeping. He didn't even know where the Doctor was, more to the point, let alone Amy.

He continued on, following the tree root.

The sparking had increased with frequency as he'd gone along too, which was odd. It didn't seem related to anything _he_ was feeling. It was if something was happening on the world far above, some planet-wide build up of emotion, some collective _feeling_ that was fuelling a build-up of power in the tree roots he was following.

It only made him more determined not to touch anything. Electrocution really did hurt.

Along the way, he'd briefly paused to think about _what_ exactly he was following – a tree root? In space? Well, not in space, but it seemed as if the corridors were built around them. As the root widened, so had the corridors – until the corridors were metres wide to accommodate the giant electrified branches. But that implied that the roots and whatever they led to had been here first. And in that case...

His thoughts were interrupted, however, when the corridor suddenly opened up again, onto a gigantic room where all the tree roots seemed to converge into one gigantic, black-brown mass. Its lustre definitely suggested that it was tree-like in nature, though way, way bigger than any tree he'd ever seen – but how big?

He looked around him for a switch – and found one just beside the door he entered. A large, red-marked lever, named _lights._

"Nice of them to make it easy for once," he murmured as he yanked down on the lever. Soon a circle of bright floodlights had turned on above him, bathing the room in stark, white light. Jack shielded his eyes momentarily, squinting in the sudden glare. He could see that the tree stretched upwards into the distance, but the light died away before he could see the top.

But then another set of lights came on, far above, illuminating what he'd assumed was the top of the tree – but it wasn't. Another set came on, and another, cascading upwards. They went all the way up, illuminating the massive central column of a tree, stretching up miles into the distance.

Finally, after a minute, the darkened sky above him bloomed into light – and Jack realised, finally, the magnitude of his task.

The tree had stopped growing upon hitting the 'roof' of the Undersphere, some five miles above him. At the top, it branched out in every imaginable direction, criss-crossing and covering the underside of the artificial world in an impossibly complex web of electrified branches. If he squinted, he could see that some seemed to be sparking with electricity. This web, as far as Jack could tell, seemed to go on into the distance, stretching to the horizon and far beyond. If he had to guess, he'd say it covered the entire underside of Earthsphere.

All he could think of in response was one simple question.

"Now what?"

* * *

><p>They'd been walking and talking for quite some time now. About Earth, and Amy. At first it had been mostly about Earth – the landscape, the people, the planet. If Michael were being honest, he'd have to say that it sounded even better when the Doctor was talking about it. The Grand Canyon, the New York skyline, the Himalayan mountains – it all sounded even more beautiful than he'd imagined.<p>

After a while, though, his focus had shifted to the girl. Amy. From Earth. Not human, but from Earth nonetheless. However, the Doctor was oddly reluctant to talk about her. As if he felt... ashamed, somehow. Not of her. Of himself, of what he'd done to her. As if he was paying penance for some terrible mistake he'd made, and as such wanted to keep it to himself.

"So come on. What is she? Friend? Girlfriend? Lover?"

The Doctor just smiled wanly at him, and given a single word in reply.

"Equal."

He'd gotten nothing else after than, despite his best efforts. Eventually, even that line of questioning had exhausted himself, and he turned to the third pressing matter on his mind.

"Doctor, has anyone ever told you that you are just a wee bit bonkers?"

"Er – maybe," the Doctor replied. "Probably, in fact – I'm sure I've heard someone, somewhere use that phrasing. Very rare, however."

The Time Lord neglected to mention, however, that the reason it was 'very rare' was that Amy tended to get more to the point, using such sweet, kind terminology such as _you complete and utter moron_ to describe him.

He missed that.

"But, seriously, you do know what they say about this place? Giant evil lizards who come out at night and rip anyone they find to shreds?"

The Doctor wasn't quite paying attention at this point, busy running his sonic up and down a tree of some kind. They were less than a hundred feet from the TARDIS, the deep blue police box still on the riverbank, but given the rapidly deepening darkness above, Michael couldn't help but glance nervously around him for, well, giant evil lizards.

They were still filming – the Doctor had admitted that that odd contraption they had set up in the shuttle didn't just pick up the signal from the quantum link. Rather, it was also an all-in-one satellite hacker and TV transmitter. And said satellite hacker had hacked into every television signal on Earthsphere and was broadcasting whatever he was filming in place of, well, everything else.

He was amazed, frankly, that they hadn't been beset by a crowd of locals, demanding that their favourite soaps and reality TV dramas be reinstated. Surely they wouldn't find this as fascinating as whichever upcoming starlet was about to be voted off? He half expected to look around and see an angry mob striding towards them, complete with torches and pitchforks – then he remembered where they were.

"Doctor! Mind answering the question?"

"Hm? No, not quite," the Time Lord answered belatedly, still off in his own little world. "Anyway, meanwhile, there is something very odd about this forest. Something very – _odd._ Something I'm missing..."

"Giant evil lizards who come out at night to rip you to shreds, perhaps?"

"Not at night, no." The Doctor, evidently having found out all he could about what Michael thought was an utterly nondescript tree, instead began to jog about the small clearing in this way and that, pointing his sonic in every which way.

"Not at..."

"Well, unlikely, I'd say. Cold-blooded, you see." The Doctor responded quickly, before unexpectedly halting in his tracks. "Hello," he murmured, picking up a small object off the forest floor. "What's this..."

From a distance, and in this light, Michael couldn't quite tell what it was, but his first instinct that it was a small, black book of some kind. That instinct was all but confirmed when the Doctor started flicking through the pages, a deep-set frown rapidly growing on his face. Michael wondered what it was, and why the Time Lord seemed so perturbed by it (which, even in his brief experience, he guessed was rare), but he had more important things to worry about.

"So there _are_ giant evil lizards living in this forest after all?"

"Evil is a bit harsh, but – yes, basically," the Doctor responded, attention still fixed on the little book in his hand. "Besides which, it's almost night. Nothing to worry about."

"Indeed," a third, rasping voice replied sardonically.

Michael snapped around, taking a moment to focus on the enormous newcomer. He backed away from the figure, his back hitting a tree, the camera shaking as he trembled with sudden fear. The Doctor, meanwhile, snapped the book shut and spun around, stuffing it in his pocket. Upon spotting the creature, his eyes widened, and he took a single, curious step towards it.

"Good evening," the giant repticore intoned in gravelly, raspy tones, its attention mostly fixed on the comparatively diminutive Time Lord before him. Extended up to its full height, its golden back scales seemed to shine in darkness, its claws gleaming in the last of the daylight. Despite its singularly intimidating appearance, however, there was an odd expression on its face – and something that looked suspiciously like polite enquiry in its sky-blue eyes. Maybe even... _amusement?_

"Hello!" The Doctor replied cheerfully, clapping his hands and stepping up to the towering lizard. "My name's the Doctor, what's yours?"

"My name is Machariam. Would you two care to explain what, exactly, you are doing on my land?"

Michael gulped.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review.<strong>


	39. Some Crazy and Brilliant Idea

****Important: Having talked to people about the length of chapters in this story, I've spent some time doing a restructure of this story so the chapters are now of a reasonable length. The result should be no more soul-destroyingly _long_ chapters, but instead a lot more shorter chapters (by "short" I mean max 5-6k words, so not short at all). That'll be how I do this story from now on too. So if you see a massive rush of apparently "new" chapters in your inbox, only to find that it's actually just the same chapters as before, this why. It might make the update frequency higher too.****

****I drop a sizeable revelation near the top as to exactly what happened to Amy all those years ago - but there are no details here yet. It's a hint. That's all.  
><strong>**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 39. Some Brilliant And Crazy Idea: 1-2 April 2011<strong>

_She's never run so fast in her life, driven by little but hope._

_Houses, roads, gardens flash past as he bolts to the disappearing mass of tweed jacket ahead of her, slips through her own gate in the house that she never truly believed was her home._

_He surely couldn't be. Maybe he was just..._

_She hears the sound of a slamming door. He's not leaving her. A voice in her head tells her that he's not. He's not. He's not..._

_A deep, gong-like reverberation and a whirring noise gives the lie to the thought. Like an old nightmare, the scene replays itself once again – the little girl, sitting in her garden, as the mad man with a box leaves her once again. _

"_Doctor..." she whispers as she runs, hoping against hope that it's a lie, that the fading box before is an illusion. That he would come back. The voice tells her that he'll come back for her. Whatever it took, the Doctor would come back for Amelia Pond._

"_Doctor, don't leave me..." But he's gone, taking the better part of her with him. The blue box is fading, fading. She closes her eyes..._

"_**DOCTOR!**_"

Amy wasn't even aware that she was awake, sword in hand and ginger hair half-covering her face. After a minute or so, her breathing evened out again and she began to take in her surroundings properly. Her Gallifreyean yell hadn't woken Katherine up, exhaustion still keeping the human girl blissfully unconscious.

They was still in that cabin that Amy had dragged Kate into yesterday after the horrible... _don't think about that, Amelia._ She was already rapidly losing her mind, she didn't need to make it worse by thinking about what might-have-been. _Might still..._

Once again, she'd decided to deal with her problems by, more or less, running away from them. As usual.

At least her dreams were getting a little better now. Well, by better, she meant that her mind had been mercifully clear of everything she'd dumped into her memory storage. On the flipside, they were getting also odder by the day. As if – and she almost laughed out loud at the thought – she was _watching_ the dream play out, and _commenting_ on it. As if she was... _aware_ of the dream somehow, in some weird way. Moreover, the dreams had become tainted with images of places she'd certainly never seen or heard of – but ones she suspected the Doctor had. As if the two of them had become subtly mind-linked too.

As if she was losing the plot, basically.

Most importantly, she'd finally cleared her mind of that awful, horrendous experience when she was fifteen. Finally understanding what had happened, finally knowing how she'd been trapped inside her own mind had been no comfort. Neither was the realisation that the white space was actually just the deepest, most despised pockets of her own mind, where she kept all her fear, all her anger and all her insecurities in a little box. After all, it had gotten out before – there was no reason it couldn't get out again.

She shook her head, rubbing her forehead with her palm. It had been a week now. A full week since she'd last seen her Doctor. And to think that she'd once told herself that she didn't _need_ him... well, technically, she didn't. If she wanted to be, if she really, really wanted to be, she knew she was effectively invincible.

But at what cost?

She pulled out her sonic screwdriver, rereading that one and only scan she'd taken the previous evening. Kate really didn't get it, just how frighteningly close she'd come to never waking up again. It was just one of the many things Amy didn't understand, why the girl cared so little about her own well-being. Didn't she realise how much she still had to live for? Back on Earth, with Rory, living a full human life, rather than-

-_this._

Amy admonished herself silently. One week. That's all it had been. One short week. She'd see him again. They would get back to exploring the universe together. That's what they did. He'd take her to Space Florida like he'd promised, or he'd finally teach her to fly, or they'd visit Ancient Greece, or something. Their life would go on, their life would be amazing. And if she wanted to, if she really, really wanted to...

_No._

The possibility of finally accepting the offer the Doctor had made to her by Kate's fireplace had been dancing around the edges of her mind now, and up 'til now she'd stubbornly refused to entertain it. She hated herself for even considering it. She didn't _need_ his protection. Goddamn it, she was the second last Time Lord in the universe. She could take care of herself.

The last week had all but confirmed that – but not in the way she'd expected.

No, _she_ didn't need protection. It was those around her, the ones she loved, who needed protection. Rory. Katherine. Even the Doctor, to an extent – though she'd never admit it out loud. That was why she had broken up with Rory. Protection. And that would be what drove her now.

OK, so she'd almost ended the life of one of her few friends, but she'd saved her as well, hadn't she? Who else could have done that? Who else was capable of the last-ditch solution that she'd come with, forcibly inserting her consciousness through the mindlink, controlling what was left of Kate's overloaded brain? She'd brought her back from the brink.

A newfound energy filled her, as the understanding born in that cave so many months ago finally reached fruition. At last, Amelia Pond, lonely Scottish girl and Time Lady, had a purpose.

She _would_ get back. She _would_ get Katherine back to the TARDIS, and get her the medical attention she needed to repair whatever damage had been caused when their minds had briefly merged. They would _both_ live, happy and safe. It's what the Doctor would do.

And he'd do that with a plan. Some crazy and brilliant idea that only he could come up with...

Well.

Maybe it was time that Amelia Pond gave it a shot.

* * *

><p>Michael wasn't entirely sure which was the more unnerving – the crowd of flint-eyed, sharp-clawed lizards around him, or the fact that the Doctor was paying no attention to them. Instead, the Time Lord kept flicking through the book that he'd found on the forest floor, muttering to himself and brooding more generally.<p>

An hour or two ago, he'd have certainly gone with the former, what with the sharp claws and all. But the Doctor had told him that the repticore weren't necessarily hostile – just territorial, and so long as you made it clear that you meant no harm, they'd leave you alone. Possibly.

"Only one way to find out," the Doctor had replied cheerily when he'd voiced his ambivalence about the whole thing. "And I haven't had a chance to say _that_ in a while."

Either way, they hadn't touched either him or the Doctor in the hour or so that he'd been in their midst. As a result, Michael had begun to suspect that they were actually okay. Even if many of them had been giving him looks which, frankly, he could only describe as evil.

Unfortunately, he'd also begun to suspect that the Doctor was not so okay.

They had been taken deep into the forest and into a clearing of some kind. Night had fallen, with the only light coming from the skydome above and an array of twisted heat-emitting columns surrounding the clearing. They were ochre coloured, but had a deep red light emanating from them. More and more repticore had gathered in the clearing as time went on, mostly surrounding something in the middle, whilst Machariam watched and the Doctor paced.

Though he hadn't moved, Michael had looked around a little. Apart from the shape of the clearing, which was suspiciously close to a perfect circle, he'd also noticed how _flat_ the ground was here. As if it were simply a floor that had been covered with leaves and earth.

"It is complete."

"Hm? Sorry?" The Doctor jerked out of his reverie, pocketing the little book and peered curiously at the congregation of repticore. They all seemed to be working on something, along with small, caterpillar-like creatures that ferried small odds and ends to and fro. Whatever it was, it was small enough that the Doctor couldn't see it, even in the odd red glow.

"The machine. It is complete," Machariam replied. The repticore slid back, revealing what they'd been working on. It was about three feet tall, and a rusty reddish-brown, close to ochre in appearance. Though it looked vaguely cylindrical, its surface was covered in small divots and wrinkles, akin to an aged, shrivelled tree.

"Ooh. Brilliant." The Doctor, whose face had brightened instantly upon seeing it, whipped out his sonic and hopped over to inspect. "Jury-rigged, organically grown helmic regulator, temporal biosynthesiser and an ice-cream maker – you're building a time machine. An actual time machine." He spun around to face Machariam, a huge grin on his face. "That is, if I may say so, rather brilliant."

"It's not ready," the repticore replied. "Studying your TARDIS has from afar has given us the last pieces in the puzzle, but it is not yet ready."

"Of course it isn't," the Doctor muttered, continuing to take readings with the sonic. "You seem to have applied all the necessary shielding, locked on to the Vortex – but where's the matrix? Oh – of course. Bio-link, distributed neural processing. Advantages of home-growing your own time machine and hooking everyone up to it." He tapped the sonic on the regulator. "Also quite brilliant. How's it powered?"

No response. The Doctor looked around, but none of the surrounding repticore seemed to be interested in giving an answer. He turned his gaze back to Machariam, whose face had remained impassive.

"Well? Without power this thing won't do a lot beyond making ice-cream. Very nice ice-cream, but I'm guessing you're not interested in that – and where'd you get plans for a time machine anyway?"

Still no response. "Oh, come on. What, you're just saying you found the bits and pieces of a time machine just lying around? Or they just ended up here?"

"No," Machariam replied in firm, gravelly tones. "The machine is an ancient piece of repticore technology. Older than any of us can remember. It was given to us in the long-distant past, at the dawn of our history as our world was burning," the repticore informed him, a distant look in its eyes. "We had been wandering the universe for a long, long time, seeking a new home. We were attracted to Earthsphere long ago, believing that its size, tranquillity and stability would be perfect for us. We believed we could coexist with those who lived here – after all, humans tend not to live in forests."

The repticore hesitated for a moment, remembering the immediate aftermath of the arrival. Riots, 'clean-up squads', guns, death... the near-extermination of his people. Luckily for them, he managed to gather what was left of the repticore and concentrate them all in the forest in which they'd landed. In their element and fuelled by a desperate drive for survival, they'd managed to hold on – but the costs were staggering.

For every ten repticore that had come to Earthsphere, only one had survived.

"We were wrong."

The Doctor didn't need to say anything, didn't need to ask any more questions to know what the pain in the lizard's eyes represented. He'd seen it all before... far, far too often.

"I'm sorry. If I'd known..."

"I appreciate it, Doctor, but I know of no cure for ignorance or hatred."

The Doctor smiled warmly at him. "Oh, you'd be surprised." Having finished the aside, he returned to inspecting the machine behind him. "Now. Based on that, I'm guessing you ran into the same little pickle that I did when I ended up here." He spun around, facing the repticore once more. "The field."

"Yes. It drained all of our power on arrival, just as it did for you. Why someone would configure it to do so... that is not my concern. Once it is gone, we can refuel and leave. Or, at least, once it is ready. And that is where I need your help."

"To..."

Machariam blinked, unsure if he really should give such an obvious answer. "Make sure it's ready."

"But you haven't answered my question – where will you get the power? With the field in place, you need to flip the polarity somehow and even then, you have to give it a kick first."

"I've sent someone to deal with that."

"You mean you sent the person _I_ sent to – _ah_." The Doctor's face paled suddenly, his mind having raced ahead of his speech. "You told Jack to destroy the field, didn't you?"

It was Machariam's turn for his eyes to widen in surprise. "How do you-"

"Friend. Old friend. Plan was for him to do what I'm about to do now, though I may have been less than clear about my intentions," the Doctor replied rapidly, having begun pacing again. "This is bad. Very, very bad. In fact, I'd say we've made a great big detour in the middle of bad-ville, and we need to find a way out," he muttered to himself. "Come on, _think."_

Michael, having followed – and filmed – the conversation in silence, didn't like the way the Doctor's mood had changed so rapidly. "Doctor? What is it?"

The Doctor span around at his voice, his face brightening suddenly. "Ah! Michael! Forgot you were there. Sorry 'bout that. Just a little problem that we need to solve – potential planetwide blackout and all, nothing major."

"_What?!"_

"Earthsphere is actually built on a enormous world-tree. Well, I say tree, but it lives in space, feeds off psychic energy and converts it to electricity. It's what your equalizer field is built around, what your entire world is built around. So you can see, destroying it would be rather... unfortunate."

Michael rubbed his eyes. "Brilliant. How do we stop it?"

To his surprise, the Doctor smiled. "Thought you'd never ask."

* * *

><p>One of the things that Stanley had been very keen on was authenticity. Right down to the last detail, everything about Earthsphere was to reflect old Earth in the right way. That included the weather, although obviously the designers were careful not to avoid creating conditions for tornadoes, hurricanes, bushfires and the like. Even so, Earthsphere had a proper climate and proper weather.<p>

Which meant that said weather was not always pleasant.

The storm had rolled in with startling rapidity, the wind lashing through the trees, stripping them of their foliage and snapping off any halfway-loose branches. What had been a calm, clear evening had suddenly turned into rolling sheets of near-horizontal rain, and a continuous rumble and crackle of thunder reverberated through the landscape. Not the easiest of conditions, then, to be looking for someone.

Not that would stop Alpha One. No. He was a trained mercenary with a decade's fighting experience, in multiple theatres of war in all sorts of timezones. He'd taken part in assassinations, rescues, invasions... the lot. That was why the Windcatcher had hired him, and that's why he didn't have one of the killswitch implants the Windcatcher liked to use to keep his toys on a leash. He was too good for that. They'd fought too many battles, side by side, for that.

But even he, good as he was, couldn't see through torrential rainfall. His nightvision goggles weren't particularly useful, either, turning a sea of dark into a smudge of dark green. There was almost no chance of seeing anything short of a bonfire in this light, let alone a dangerous, semi-mythical warrior demi-goddess.

He'd had to double check his brief when he'd got it. A Time Lady? _Really?_ To the best of his knowledge, they were just a story, a myth from a long-lost past. Superhumans with unseemly power over all of time and space, whose dominion had fallen chiefly due to their own hubris – made for a damn good story, but those stories tended not to be true.

Apparently, however, this one was. All he knew had a name – Amy Pond – and a warning. _Approach with extreme caution. The mark is highly dangerous and may be armed. Psychic protection is mandatory._ Beyond that, he was told that she'd been detected late in the afternoon in the area around Esther's Falls via the equalizer field and he'd been assigned to patrol one of the woodlands to the north. He'd found nothing since.

It was now well past two in the morning, singularly miserable and, professionalism aside, his focus was starting to waver. He really should be finding somewhere dry to get a bit of shuteye, but he couldn't until he could be sure the woodland was clear. After all, if she was as dangerous as he was told she was, then it could be the last-_the hell was that?_

He tensed instantly, on alert and trigger finger itching. He was sure that the loud crackling noise hadn't just been the rain.

"Alright, missy. You've got my attention, now show yourself," he muttered, carefully walking ahead. He didn't dare move quicker than a creep, firstly because the terrain around here was by no means flat, and secondly he had his ears pinned for any more unusual noises such as – _that_.

Unmistakeable. Footsteps crunching leaves underfoot. And a second later, a soft swishing, someone moving through the forest, barely audible through the downpour. He _still_ didn't have a visual but he was sure – this was it.

All tiredness banished, he raised his gun to shoulder level, ready to shoot on sight. His orders had been clear – alive was better, but take no chances. He halted on the spot, turning his head slowly to try and find his mark. He had been _sure_ he'd seen something, but there was nothing ahead of him but trees. And rain. Lots and lots of rain.

"Come on," he muttered, scanning left and right again. "Show yourself already."

"Okay."

The mercenary let out a tiny gasp, spinning at the sound of the voice whilst simultaneously raising his gun. But he was too late.

* * *

><p>Katherine jerked awake with a gasp, yanked to consciousness mid-dream. Her eyes roved wildly in their slots before settling, her breathing taking a few seconds longer to level out. She quickly surmised that it was still night, based on how dark it was, and there was a hell of a storm outside, based on the ceaseless thrum of the rain and the howling wind. She quietly thanked Amy for finding somewhere indoors for them to sleep at night.<p>

It was hardly comfortable on the hard wooden floor, though, and the fire had almost died. She sat up, diving into her backpack (which she'd been using as a pillow) for something a bit warmer.

It didn't escape her, however, that she was alone.

That Amy had been acting weirdly was no surprise – 'Amy acting weirdly' was a pretty good way to sum up the events of the whole week – but what could she possibly be doing in _this_ weather?

She rested her head against the wall, closing her eyes and frowning in concentration so she could sharpen her mind enough to send her one-word message.

_**Oi.**_

There was no response – but she hadn't expected one. Amy, though more than a little bit bonkers nowadays, knew what she was doing with the inhibitor. She'd barely heard a squeak from the Time Lady's mind since. That didn't mean, however, that Amy couldn't hear her – assuming that the Time Lady was still alive.

Her pulse quickened as the thought crossed her mind.

_**Ames. Can you hear me?**_

Still nothing. Though she didn't try to get up, she could feel the first onset of panic beginning to set in.

_**Amelia, please...**_

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time."

Kate sighed in relief, opening her eyes again. She shuffled upright as best she could, trying to ignore both the crackles of pain in her chest and the fact that her head felt like it'd been filled with lead. She smiled as Amy re-entered, closing the door behind her. She was absolutely drenched, a fact that made Kate raise an eyebrow more than a little.

"The hell were you doing out there?"

"Oh, you know," Amy replied off-handedly as she did her best to squeeze out some of the water from her hair. "Stuff."

"Stuff meaning...?"

"Getting us home. We'll be off this rock by mid-morning."

Kate raised an eyebrow. "Sure?"

"Sure. Cross my hearts."

If Kate was sceptical – and she was, very much so – she hid it, giving Amy a relieved smile. There was something slightly different about Amy, she could tell – an energy, a liveliness that hadn't been there all week. As if she'd finally found something to focus her brilliant, chaotic mind.

"Fair enough. Looking forward to seeing him again?"

Amy's eyes snapped up to hers, her mouth curving upwards in a warm smile. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am."

"I'm still amazed it took you so long to work it out."

"It wasn't that. We've both known for ages."

Kate snorted.

"I'm not lying here. But I wanted Rory too – and he wanted me to be with Rory as well. Still does, I think," she finished quietly, a note of sadness in her voice. It would never really fade, she knew, the knowledge of just how one-sided their relationship had been. He'd tried to give her everything, and in return...

"But that's gone now," Kate told her quietly. "You can't live that life."

"Yeah. Except-" She hesitated for a moment, not sure whether she should give voice and life once more to the thought that had been rolling around her head for the past few days. "Except I could always go back."

Kate's eyes widened. "What, back to Leadworth? Where everyone thinks you're dead, and everyone is human?"

"Only for a short while. Y'know, while I... work things out."

"Short meaning...?"

"Short to me, not you."

It didn't exactly sound convincing. "I'm not seeing it. You still want Rory in your life, I get that – but you have the Doctor."

"I know. And I want him _so_ badly, Katherine. But I'll have him for all of eternity. A few years is nothing to me, and I'm good at waiting."

Kate shook her head. "Still not seeing it."

"I don't expect you to – it's complicated. It's only an idea, I don't actually expect to be going back any time soon." She smiled down at Katherine that, a week ago, neither would have believed remotely possible. "Anyway, it's not important. More important is that we're ready to get picked up by the Doctor in the morning, and that I'll be here to save you. Get back to sleep, Broad."

Kate rolled her eyes. "Yes, ma'am." She shuffled back down, folding up the thick woolen jumper she'd pulled to use as a pillow and closing her eyes. She was back under within minutes.

The moment she sensed that Katherine had fallen asleep again, Amy snapped into gear. She dove into Kate's open rucksack, quickly finding what she was looking for – Kate's phone. The Doctor hadn't upgraded it so it had been useless in this environment. It had remained off for the entire week week.

But that was about to change. She peeled off the back casing, exposing the circuitry within, and got to work with her sonic.

There was a chance that this could backfire, of course. There was the chance that, the moment she turned the thing on, she'd be found and all manner of hell would converge on her. She didn't even know if what she was about to do was possible – this phone wasn't designed for this. It was meant to be used with early 21st century wireless networks, not a pervasive quantum-telepathic web whose workings even she didn't understand.

Then again, it wasn't as if _her_ phone had been designed to be converted to a sonic screwdriver, yet she'd done that too.

After a few minutes of tinkering and sonicing, she was done. She replaced the back cover once more and flipped the phone over and placed her thumb on the power button, taking a deep, steadying breath as she did so.

_Moment of truth._

She turned the phone on.

* * *

><p>"Alpha One. Do you read?"<p>

The operator clicked off the transmitter, waiting for a response. After five seconds of silence, he decided to try his luck again.

"Alpha One, this is Control. _Do you read?_"

"Save it," the Windcatcher told him, watching the display in his shuttle pensively. "He's trained not to break silence unless absolutely necessary."

"What about the tracking link?" The operator pulled up another screen, where there was a single blinking red dot amidst a black-and-blue map of the area. "It's not moving."

"Doesn't matter. Wait for him to report."

This was just the latest in a series of complications, starting late yesterday afternoon. The equaliser field had picked up a truly colossal psychic spike from somewhere near Esther's Falls a few hours before sunset. However, it had been so brief and so anomalous that the software had immediately filtered it out, not relaying the information to the Windcatcher. It was only one of the his operators sifting through junk to recalibrate their hacking software that he'd found the spike. The operator had been sceptical, but the Windcatcher was immediately convinced.

Unfortunately, the spike was so brief, and Esther's Town was so heavily populated, that it become rather lost in translation. As a result, they'd had no success at all at pinning down a precise location – which meant the Windcatcher had to send his men to find her the hard way.

That was both inefficient – they were looking for one, possibly two, people in an area of over fifty square miles – and dangerous. Dangerous because it left his resources nastily overstretched, but even more so because if they _did_ run into the Time Lady, he had a bad feeling about what would happen to them. These were good men, not cheap thugs. He didn't want to throw them away – but increasingly he had the feeling that that was exactly what he was doing.

And if Alpha One had run into trouble... he cleared his mind of the thought. Alpha One was a professional, and so was he.

"What about the Doctor?"

He had to smile at himself. The Doctor seemed to be concocting some mad scheme to recharge his TARDIS, involving the repticore somehow, and filming it. All that was likely there is that the equaliser field would crash, stranding the time machine permanently. Unless, of course, he could reverse the polarity somehow and have the equaliser field direct its energy _towards_ the TARDIS, rather than away – but that was impossible, surely?

"I wish him luck," the Windcatcher replied dryly. "He's not our concern. The Time Lady is."

"But Alpha One-"

"If he doesn't respond within the hour, we'll move."

The operator opened his mouth to respond, but he was cut off by a flashing alert light on the screen in front of him – the incoming call they'd just been talking about. The operator and the Windcatcher glanced at each other, before the bounty hunter reached forward and clicked the call on.

"Hello," came the voice through the speaker. Not Alpha One's voice – a girl's voice. Soft, gentle and melodic – while at the same time being as cold and imposing as a glacier.

"My name is Amelia Pond. I believe you're looking for me."

* * *

><p><strong>Please <strong>**review. I really have no way of getting feedback if you don't. Anonymous reviews are perfectly fine.**


	40. The Fire Burns Within

**So. The Angels Take Manhattan, eh? Still can't rewatch, just a wee bit too intense for me right now. At least the Ponds, and Amy, got the send-off they deserved. Still far too much in love with this character for my own emotional health – and far too much to rewatch the episode, haha.**

**Good time to point out that this is an early S5 AU in totality; the additions to Amy's backstory that occur in S6/7 do _not_ occur in this story. In particular that very last shot.  
><strong>

**This is another chapter where we see a little bit of both ends of Amy's character. And one big... well, I'll let you read on.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 40. The Fire Burns Within: 2 April 2011<strong>

Earthsphere did not sleep easily that night.

They didn't know who he was. They didn't know where he came from, why he was here or what he wanted.

All they knew that this man, this Doctor, had come with a dream. He'd told them of vast, sweeping plains, rugged mountain ranges and wide, vast oceans of the sparkling blue. He'd spoken of blood-red sunsets, of raging summer thunderstorms and, above all, the people.

He'd told them about the young shop assistant who'd had her eyes opened to the universe, about the temp who'd learned to believe in herself, the journalist who had saved her people more times than he could count, and a girl.

A seven-year-old girl, patiently waiting in her garden.

"Night after night," he had said, "She would sit down on the grass, wrapped in her blankets, and watch the stars. Every day she would wait there, hoping for something more, yearning for the things that only lived in her fantasies. Her dreams.

"Every night," he told them, "She would lie in her garden and reach for the stars."

That night, Earthsphere dreamed.

* * *

><p>It was a lovely town, Esther's Falls.<p>

Founded during the first wave of colonisation after Earthsphere was completed, it had been mostly settled by the outcasts of the universe – the poor, hungry and oppressed. The ones who needed Earthsphere's safety and tranquility the most. As a result, though, it meant that the town had grown sideways, not upwards – they couldn't really afford skyscrapers around here. It also meant that the centre of town was now somewhat abandoned, being much too far from where the people actually lived – it was over ten miles to many of the suburbs, quite considerable given that cars were banned.

The upshot was that the once-thriving town hall had become the perfect place for the Windcatcher to set up his local base of operations, unnoticed and unheard. On the other hand, however, the chances that anyone would have so much have seen the Time Lady was remote since there were thousands upon thousands of people around here. Finding a specific person around these parts, especially one who was as good as hiding as she was, was borderline-impossible.

Unless, of course, that person _wanted_ to be found.

"Amelia Pond," the Windcatcher murmured into the microphone, half to himself.

"That's my name," came the cool, firm reply from the speaker. "Glad you got that right at least."

"You sound younger than I expected."

"Twenty-two, not two hundred and two," Amy replied.

He paused briefly at the news. He knew she was young, but... _that_ young? _Little more than a girl, _he mused – before banishing the thought. It wouldn't do to be disquieted by the whole thing now. Even if he increasingly was.

"You're barely more than a child by Time Lord standards."

"I'm not an ordinary Time Lord, as you're well aware since you know so much about us. After all," she paused, seemingly for effect. "You did _fight_ in the Time War."

The Windcatcher froze, his knuckles whitening around the microphone.

"How the _hell_ did you find that out?"

"Oh, here and there," she replied playfully. "Apparently you even fought alongside the Doctor – though I guess you tried to kill him, too."

_Not really, no._

"Not important, anyway," he said instead. "Why are you calling us? You know perfectly well what I want."

"And you know I'm not about to give it to you."

"I'm well aware," he replied, humouring her. He glanced sideways where his men were busy at work trying to pin down her location. The blinking red dot from Alpha One's tracker had vanished, making that task even harder than before.

"You won't find me like that," Amy suddenly interjected, an amused lilt to her voice. "I've scrambled the signal from that bloke's tracker. You'll be miles off if you try, especially in the town you're in."

His fist tightened even further around the microphone, bending it out of shape. "You can hear our thoughts?"

"I can filter the thoughts of your goons if I concentrate, yes. You lot aren't subtle."

The Windcatcher opened his mouth to reply, but hesitated, struck by something. _If she can hear our thoughts, then she knows where we are and has access to our minds. If she has that..._

What other cards did Amy Pond have to play?

More importantly, why wasn't she playing them?

"Very well," he replied, not vocalising the curiosities that had just sprung to mind. "You've made your point."

"You're being mighty civil for someone who's trying to kill me."

"Since you seem to know so much about us, you should already know that we don't do kill contracts." _Not yet, anyway._

"And yet your orders were changed to say kill-on-sight. Or do you not play by your own rules?" Amy asked in a slightly sing-song tone. The Windcatcher frowned. First that alarming tidbit about his own past, and now this. How _did_ she know so much about – _ah_.

_Alpha One._

"What have you done with him?" He asked after a moment's pause, in a low, mildly dangerous tone. Professional though he was, Alpha One was his friend. If there was one thing he'd learnt in his twisted, dark universe, it was that loyalty mattered.

"Nothing permanent," came the easy reply.

He furrowed his brow in surprise. "You haven't killed him?"

"Would you like me to?"

He pursed his lips, well aware of just how delicate the situation had become. If the Time Lady had scoured Alpha One's brain for information, she would have near total control over his mind and could end him in a heartbeat.

"No. Now, _what do you want_?"

"An offer beneath the trees," she told him. A moment later, the red blinking dot from the tracker appeared on the screen once more.

"Come alone."

The call ended.

Twenty miles away, Amy Pond pocketed the mobile phone. She smiled, watching the quantum link she'd taken from Iverson's house blink in her hands.

_Time to come and get me, raggedy man._

* * *

><p>Jack didn't have the foggiest idea what the Doctor was doing up there, but he wasn't sure he liked it.<p>

He'd been trying all night to shut the equaliser field-slash-electric-tree, without success. The whole damn thing seemed automated, harvesting whatever latent psychic energy there was around and turning it into fierce arcs of electricity crackling through the air around him.

And there was a _lot_ of it.

He'd had to beat a hasty retreat as the arcing electricity had begun to work its way around the room, forks of lightning discharging into the walls with a deafening thunderclap. He'd been narrowly missed once, which was more than enough for him to make himself scarce.

He stood behind the doorway, his aged, clever eyes searching the chaos within for something he could use. But there was nothing – it was far too dangerous a place to loiter for more than a few seconds, lest he get zapped by several million volts of electricity, and there was no sort of control panel that he could see. He'd searched the nearby rooms, hoping to find something of note, but apart from what looked like a teleport landing pad – wouldn't have _that_ saved some time – there was nothing of note.

He was seriously beginning to consider giving up and flashing back up to the surface to try and give his findings with the Doctor when he was blinded by another star-bright burst of electricity from the tree. He flinched, covering his eyes – but left a little gap between his fingers to peek through.

The bolt of lightning arced upwards, wildly gyrating through the air as it reached its destination – a pylon of lights, suspended fifty feet above the floor.

The lights exploded, showering the room with sparks. The pylon supporting it seemed to fare better for a moment, wavering under the electrical assault, before it too let out a metallic screeching as the metal sheared from its support.

For a moment, the scene was oddly tranquil, silent, as the steel pylon fell gracefully from its former abode.

But a second later, Jack was forced to dive for cover as the metal beams hit the ground, sending dust, shards of glass from the floor and steel shrapnel hurtling through the air.

He waited for a few seconds behind the wall, breaths heavy, listening through the silence for the sound of further destruction – _hang on_, he thought suddenly.

_Silence?_

He poked his head back through the door cautiously, glancing around the room.

The arcing lightning bolts were gone. Their flashing, dancing streams of blue-white electricity had vanished, leaving the room dark, silent, and peaceful – save for one thing.

The bulk of the pylon, mangled and twisted, had come to rest in the middle of the room – right on top of one of the metre-wide, black-brown branches that fed the main trunk of the enormous, sky-high tree. Jack's eyes widened, letting out a small gasp, as he saw what was happening to it.

It was _glowing._

Pulses of soft blue emanated from the metal, its dull silver-grey surface now a luminescent, almost sky-blow glow. Jack watched, transfixed, as the pylon brightened, the soft blue light increasing in intensity until it was too bright to even look at.

Amazed, he came out from behind the door frame and took a step into the room. There was complete silence, save for a low hum from the gently vibrating pylon. It was almost as if all the rage and fury that had been present moments before had been forced into this twisted piece of metal.

_Almost as if..._

He never got to finish the thought, however, because at that moment the gentle blue glow was replaced by a scorching, infinitely bright white light, and Jack thought no more.

* * *

><p>To a first approximation, everyone was asleep. It was only natural, after all – it was coming up to an hour so late it was actually close to early morning, so those still awake were few and far between. To a man, however, they were all doing the same thing.<p>

Namely, they were cursing angrily at their TVs, wondering why they'd blanked out for no apparent reason. They wanted to know more about the magical utopia they'd only ever heard of in far-off fantasies, and about this girl, this amazing, magnificent girl, the dreamer the man had spoken about.

After a minute of worldwide abuse and angry fists hammering on the television sets, the inexplicable blackout ended, the image flickering back to life.

"...I have a species to save, Doctor," Machariam was saying. "I do not care about the playthings of humans."

The Doctor stopped dead in his tracks, pausing his relentless pacing around the clearing to stare at the lizard. They had spent the last hour moving to the hidden teleporter riverbank, the Doctor having made several detours to the TARDIS first. He had returned with an assortment of objects – some to help prepare the repticore ship, some to attach to the teleporter, some whose purpose he hadn't told anyone about at all. Right now, however, no one was particularly concerned about that. He looked the repticore dead in the eye, not the slightest bit intimidated by the towering lizard.

"Playthings?" He asked, low and quiet.

He took one, two steps towards the repticore. When he spoke, his voice started evenly but soon rose higher and higher. "How about the elderly grandmother, shivering at home as she slowly freezes at night because her heater died, hm? Are those _playthings? _How about-"

"Doctor!"

"-the sick person in hospital, whose life support system just lost power because-"

"_Doctor!"_

"What?!" The Time Lord spun around, his eyes flashing.

Michael almost stumbled backwards when he saw the ferocity of the expression on the Doctor's face. The man had been slightly unhinged ever since...

Well, ever since spotting that diary, now that he thought about it. He wondered once more what exactly it contained, what was inside – but that was for another time.

"The power's on. We're back," he said, pointing to his camera which had the 'record' light blinking merrily once more.

It was as if a switch had been flicked. At once, the Doctor's demeanour became bouncy and light once more, a boyish grin creeping over his equally boyish features.

"Brilliant! Let's not do that again, eh?" He laid an arm across Michael's back. "Blackouts tend to be bad."

"So that's what happens when the equaliser field goes off?"

"Well, that and the fact that the pent-up electrical energy will build up until we all get blown to smithereens."

"_What?!"_

"Well, something like that, anyway. The specific type of psychic energy harvested by the equaliser-field-tree-thing is very... temperamental. Doesn't like to be trapped in one place. Claustrophobic, if you will."

Michael had to raise an eyebrow. "Claustrophobic psychic energy?"

"If you think about it long enough, it makes sense," the Doctor assured.

"Right. So now...?"

"Now we stop it happening again. Which, luckily for you, is _your_ job."

"Alright. But how?" Michael asked.

"No idea. My bet is that whatever's on the other side of this teleporter-" the Doctor motioned at the tree, whose central column glowed an eerie blue in the darkness, "-will tell us what's what."

"So I-"

"So you simply just have to go through, find my friend who I'm guessing is down there somewhere, and get him to stop whatever he's trying to do. Simple eh?"

Michael nodded. It _sounded_ simple – though the lack of detail was somewhat troubling.

"Good man," the Doctor said, patting him on the back once more. "Now, if you happen to come _directly_ across the tree-field-thingamajig, use it to fill up these and get them back to me, would you?" The Doctor took the camera from Michael's hands, replacing it with two rather spiky-looking objects. They were two of the objects whose purpose the man hadn't explained, though based on what he'd been told about the field's workings, he could make an educated guess.

"Are these...?"

"Yep. Batteries. Stick 'em in, fill 'em up, get 'em back to me. I'll use them to recharge my TARDIS and get lizard boy here-" he jerked his head back towards Machariam "-off and running."

Michael nodded once more. The Doctor beamed at him. "Well, time to get cracking, eh?" He whipped out his sonic screwdriver, pointing it straight at the the teleporter. The symbol engraved into the hollow interior immediately glowed a vibrant gold.

Michael opened his mouth, his eyes widening, but didn't have time to ask what was going on as a solid crimson sphere of light surrounded him. A second later, he was gone.

Once silence and darkness had returned to the starlit forest again, the Doctor turned to face Machariam, his sky-blue eyes cool and his expression hard.

"You really think you can reverse the polarity of the psychic flow?"

The Doctor shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. Worth a shot."

"I suppose so," the repticore said.

"Don't think I've forgotten, by the way," the Doctor warned the repticore coolly. "You could have killed a lot of people tonight."

"Me?" Machariam made an odd rasping noise, its version of laughter. "I think, Doctor, you should be telling that to the _humans_ who swept through the forests, massacring my people. You should be telling that to your friend Stanley Blood, who _encouraged_ the mobs, the riots, the murderers."

"This is a refuge for the lost and the helpless, a place to hide from violence – frightened people. Frightened people do frightened things."

"And so that justifies murder?"

The Doctor's eyes flashed dangerously once more. "And so your response to a genocide is to commit another genocide? "

"My first and only duty is to my people, Doctor," the repticore replied, its eyes shining with conviction, yet shot with the weariness of age. It sighed. "There is nothing here for us. My people's freedom – _our_ freedom – is all that matters to me now. Otherwise, all those deaths will have truly been in vain."

The Doctor's expression softened, his voice lowering. "I understand. Truly, I understand, and I only wish I had the opportunity you have now. But I still need your help."

He paused for a second, gauging the repticore's response. However, there was nothing to be read in its scaled, angular face or its clear light-blue eyes.

He sighed. "After all, I have a species to save as well."

* * *

><p>Though the woodland was relatively sparse, there were enough trees within that it was hard to see more than a hundred feet or so into the forest. It was a good place to hide, despite it being so open.<p>

The downside, though, was that it terminated rather abruptly at the edges, going from temperate woodland to grass almost instantly. It wasn't natural – the area had been cleared, years before, so the town could expand around the shiny new spaceport that had been built. That had gone nowhere, so instead there was a half-mile or so of thick, overgrown grassland in the gap between the woodland and the busy spaceport.

The Windcatcher stood at the edge of the forest, gazing up at the thick canopy of golden-brown leaves above him. It was autumn in this part of the world, and he could see leaves falling in the pre-dawn light.

"This is exceptionally dangerous," one of his men told him. "Alone, in there-"

"I don't have a choice," he replied.

"And if she kills you?"

"She won't. Though it would be very, very easy for her to kill the rest of us if she wanted to," he pointed out.

"So why hasn't she?"

The Windcatcher paused for a moment, gazing into the semi-darkness of the woodland beyond, as if trying to peer into the secret held within. This was a lot of risk and danger for what seemed a simple task – though simple and easy were very, very different things.

However, it also sounding increasingly... wrong, catching a powerful yet oddly benign alien who was far, far too young to have been an actual threat to anyone. He'd hunted Time Lords before, he'd fought them before. He'd never fought one as powerful as this – but he'd never fought one as _young_ as this either. What, exactly, did her employers intend with this girl who really was just a girl? He still had a moral compass, as twisted and skewed by cynicism as it was.

It simply didn't add up and that, increasingly, was a problem. But one he could ignore for now.

"Good question, and one that I suspect we'll have to find out in due course. However, there's only one way to do that."

"Very well. Are you going in now, sir?" The black-coated mercenary asked.

"Yes," the Windcatcher replied. He gave the trees one last searching look before stepping beyond the threshold and into the falling leaves. "Keep a lookout," he called back, "Until I say otherwise. Make sure no one else enters this place."

"And leaving?"

The Windcatcher stopped dead in his tracks. He'd forgotten about that – the other little complication. The girl who he'd tried to use against Amelia to pin her down.

"Our goal is the Time Lady. Do whatever is necessary to make that job easier, but otherwise, leave her alone."

"And so if they try to escape together?"

The Windcatcher replied slowly, carefully, articulating every word.

"Whatever is necessary_._"

* * *

><p><em>White.<em>

_Just white. In every direction, as far as the eye could see, just white. Pure, unblemished, infinite whiteness surrounds her, fills her vision._

_She stands up._

_Where the hell is she?_

_She isn't supposed to be here, she's sure of that. Even disregarding the fact that she's never, ever heard of anywhere like this, she simply isn't supposed to be here._

_Last she remembers, she was... she was..._

_She rubs her head, frowning. It's like her memories have this odd sepia filter on it, like she's viewing them through a bad TV with mountains of static. If she tries, if she really tries, she can recall glimpses of a village house, of a worried aunt, of a majestic walled city and a spreading white malaise. But they're all distant, vague, and oddly ephemeral, like water slipping between her fingers._

_After a moment, she realises that she can't really remember where she's supposed to be. So why shouldn't she be here?_

_Even now, when she thinks about this place... even though she's never seen it before, never heard of it before, it seems oddly familiar. Even though every good sense within her tells her that this is completely impossible, it's as if this place is... part of her, somehow._

_She can't explain it. But it doesn't matter, as there's no one else here to explain it to._

_She turns around, surveying the whiteness around her. There's nothing here, completely empty, completely... white. Everywhere. Everlasting. There's no discernible horizon, and her own figure doesn't even cast a shadow on the perfectly blank floor._

_Well, that's strange, she thinks. Is she dreaming? But dreams don't usually feel this real._

_A sudden reverberation runs through the floor, and she spins around to gaze at the source of the noise. Her eyes widen to saucers, her heart racing as she takes in the newcomer._

_It's a box._

_A police box, ten feet tall and the bluest of blues. The box she's been dreaming of for eight years._

_She takes a tentative step towards it, afraid it might vanish, fade from her life again._

"_Raggedy man..." she whispers, fearful that the mere sound of her voice will blow it away._

_It doesn't. It just stays there, stable, steady, unmoving. She breaks into a sprint, crying out joyously._

"_Doctor! Raggedy Doctor!"_

_She reaches the still-closed doors, readying herself to meet the man she loved as much as she resented, the man who had been her greatest source of strength and her most fatal weakness._

_Her Doctor._

_She places a palm on the door, wanting to feel its texture, wanting to confirm that this really is just as real as she needs it to be – then gasps, jerking her hand back as she feels her skin burning. She looks at her singed, blistering hand in horror – which doubles when she moves her gaze back to the box._

_The point where she had placed her hand is ablaze, the wood charring under the dancing, spreading flames. The fire moves outwards, consuming the box, destroying it, turning it to fine, powdery ash which vanishes into the infinite white surrounding her._

_She lets out a scream, falling to her knees as her dream burns before her eyes._

* * *

><p>She was still screaming when she awoke, eyes sightless to the sudden darkness around her. The only thing she could see was the scorching white light, the only thing she could feel was that single, terrible moment of despair and horror.<p>

She kept screaming until she felt herself being grabbed roughly, a voice shouting in her ear.

"Katherine! _Katherine!"_

The sound of the Time Lady's voice brought Kate back to reality at last, her wildly roving eyes settling on the fiery emerald above hers. Amy gently wiped away some of the sweat on Kate's forehead, the Time Lady's face pale with anguish and her eyes watery.

"I've been trying to wake you up for the last minute," Amy told her softly. "Didn't quite work."

"What... what _was _that?" Kate couldn't remember being so utterly petrified by a dream before.

"That was me."

"Y-_you_?" Kate gazed at her in disbelief before the penny dropped. "Wait. That thing when we were at school. When you were away."

Amy averted her gaze. "Yeah."

"_That_ was it?"

"That was just the start," Amy whispered, a single tear rolling down her cheek. She'd fought so very, very hard to keep it locked inside, and the fact she'd siphoned off some of these memories into that little piece of metal had convinced her that she'd won the battle.

How wrong she was.

"I'm sorry," they told each other simultaneously. Amy gave a low, sad chuckle, squeezing her friend's hand.

"It's only a dream."

"I'm sorry," Kate repeated with more emphasis. "I mean, I've had bits of that dream all week, but..." It wasn't even the dream itself that had so frightened her. It was the raw, naked _terror_ that had accompanied it. The emptiness. The despair. She'd never felt anything like that before.

"But now you understand, don't you? Just a little bit. You've seen enough... you've seen that there's this part of me, somewhere inside, which I have to lock away. This bit of me that I can't let anyone see, but that he..."

Amy didn't continue, but the pregnant silence she'd left behind left a gap that had to be filled.

"He's only trying to help," Kate told her. Amy turned away to gaze out into the driving rainstorm outside. It wasn't unlike some of the driving rain showers she remembered from when she was young. Back home.

"Amy?" A trembling hand against her arm.

"I know," she replied quietly.

"He's just scared for you, that's all. And what's the harm of letting him see?"

Amy didn't turn or move, head bowed, her knuckles tightening visible against the windowsill.

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I _can't,"_ Amy repeated, her voice firmer. "You've seen it. You _know_."

Kate didn't relent. "Amy, you love him. I _know_ you love him, with everything you've got. So let him see you for what you are – open up to him," she said, her voice firm yet with a subtle pleading note. Damn it, this was her friend, one she counted closer than she'd have believed possible not long ago. She would _not_ let her self-destruct.

_I won't let you do that._

"The more you try to protect other people from yourself, the more you end up hurting yourself... and he wouldn't want that," she implored.

Amy still didn't move, her fists clenched, clear knots of tension between her shoulders. Kate reached up nervously, unsure how the Time Lady would react, unable to penetrate the myriad defences Amy had put up around her emotions, unable to peer into the deep recesses of her friend's once-human mind.

When Amy felt Kate's trembling hand grip her own, however, she didn't snap, or scream, or do any of the many horrible things she was capable of. Instead, the Time Lady turned and stared at the pale, trembling fingers wrapped around hers. Kate's skin was soft – like hers, yet so unlike.

She squeezed back, smiling at the human girl. A warm, summer-filled smile that reached her eyes, those same emerald-green eyes which were lit with kindness, shot with ferocity – yet with that deep, unmistakeable undercurrent of loss.

The story of her life.

"Doesn't matter now," she told her best friend. "It'll be daylight soon, you'd better get up."

"Oh?" Kate pushed herself upright, gritting her teeth against the sparkle of pain in her ribs and the dull headache she could feel coming on. "Where are we going?"

"Home."

* * *

><p><strong>And that, if you hadn't spotted it, is basically the conclusion of a <em>long-<em>running subplot. Kate's character _has_ evolved some distance from how I originally envisaged it, but the role she plays in this story is still fundamentally the same.**

**We're getting to the pointy end of this _long_-running plot arc, I promise.**


	41. In The Morning Light

**Sorry for the delay. Exams et cetera. **

**An entirely Amy/Kate chapter, this one. Somewhat intense, so be prepared.  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 41. In The Morning Light<br>**

_After the fire, the voice._

_The words. Those five words. Over and over._

_He is not coming back._

_It just makes her scream all the louder, so as to drown out the noise._

_Her hands are raw, bleeding and blistered. The blackened strips of wood still glow from the fire, burning her palms as she cradles them into her. The skin is peeling off her arms, and she's screaming, screaming her life out, but not from the pain. Not from the burns._

_She's spent so long waiting for him. So long. She's staked everything, built everything around waiting, to the exclusion to almost everything else._

_She'd met him for minutes, mere minutes, but she knew, deep within, that he was the only man who understood her. Who believed her. Who could see her for who she truly was. She'd waited for this, waited for her dream, and now it was in flames. How could this happen?_

_Maybe it couldn't._

_Maybe she'd been right the first time. Maybe this isn't real, maybe this is just some horrible, awful dream. Because she knows, to the very core of her being, that the voice is wrong. She knows that her raggedy man will come back for her. _

_And she'll wait through every moment until he does._

* * *

><p><strong>2 April 2011<strong>

With the dawn came the light.

The purple hue of the early morning sky was lightening, the darkness being chased away by the glorious blue of the day. As the first rays of light crept over the horizon, they scattered off the rustling leaves of the woodland, the gentle sigh of the breeze the only sound. At this hour, not even the birds and the bees were awake, and nothing moved. It was peaceful, so peaceful, and Amy loved it.

She stood in the clearing, feeling the wind through her hair, the fleeting warmth of the light on her face. She stood in the clearing, alone, and took a moment to savour the feeling, the tranquility that could only come at this time of day.

It was ironic, really. She'd never been known as a morning person. Rory often had to bribe her with promises of coffee and hot breakfast to coax her out of bed in the time they'd been together... that all-too-brief, wonderful time. But, of course, with her humanity had gone her need for sleep, so now here she was. She took a long, slow breath, closing her eyes against the light.

They were half a mile from the edge of the woodland, according to the map she'd taken from Iverson's villa. Katherine was lagging behind for some reason, so Amy had taken the opportunity to move ahead and relax. If the next few hours went to plan, she'd neutralise the Windcatcher, send her position to the Doctor, get the TARDIS working and get them _all_ off this place safe and sound.

Though, if they didn't...

_That __doesn't __matter._That was the point of what she was doing now. She would escort Kate to the edge of the woodland and get her clear. While it would almost certainly be under surveillance, she was confident that Kate, alone, would be in no danger. It wasn't her they were after. It was a contingency Amy had to have, because she was well aware that there was a good chance that she'd be dead in a handful of hours.

And she was okay with that, really. The dying bit, anyway. Oh, sure, it wasn't ideal, and she had no intention of dying, and she was still young enough to be a little apprehensive, but it wasn't _that_ sort of fear. It wasn't the sort of existential, primal fear in her bones that meant she'd climb over a mountain of dead to save herself. No, she wasn't that sort of person, she'd never been that sort of person. She would fight, and fight until the end, but she wouldn't use anyone as a shield.

She hadn't feared death when she thought the Angel had turned her hand to stone, and she didn't fear it now.

She'd lived well, after all. Briefly, but well. The last year had been the stuff of... well, _dreams_ seemed a bit mundane. She'd actually dreamt of this, after all, and it had blown all her expectations right out of the water. All the things she'd seen, all the things she'd done... what could compare to it?

_Nothing. __Absolutely __nothing._It hurt sometimes, but it was the most wonderful kind of hurt she could imagine.

Yes, there'd been a cost. There'd been debts that had needed to be repaid, to her and by her. Given the godawful mess that her human self had left her, there were a lot of them. She'd done her best to deal with them in the short time life had given her, and she'd done alright. Rory was safe and well in Leadworth, she'd neatly resolved all her other issues in Leadworth – thanks mostly to Jack – and she was, at last, free.

Free to live. Free to love.

_Love._ It burned so fiercely inside her, filled the emptiness so completely that she thought she might burst with all. Through all her snark, all her crazy and all her sadness, it was really the one thing she could rely on.

Love for the Doctor. A love so deep that she could scarcely comprehend it. In the end, she was little, so little, without him. She hadn't quite comprehended how tightly they were intertwined, now that she'd spent a week without him.

Love for her Aunt, who despite the arguments, the tantrums and the rage, had taken care of her when no one else would.

Love for Rory, and _that_ would never, ever die. No matter what the two of them did, what paths they took, she knew in her heart that he would do anything for her. It ashamed her that she couldn't say the same. He would have found a way to solve their relationship if he was in her position, she knew, yet she'd failed. All her intellect, all her power, and she'd _failed._ Really, why had Katherine been so surprised when she'd found out just how bleak she was inside?

Speaking of Katherine...

"Alright. I'm here. What's this all about?"

Amy opened her eyes, turning around. Kate's usually lustrous hair was unkempt and frazzled, the result of a week of interrupted sleep. Amy smiled fondly at her.

"Esther's Falls is just past the treeline. Get to the spaceport and wait for me. There's a map in your bag. We'll pick you up when the TARDIS is ready."

"Wait for-"

"There's bound to be people watching. If I go out there with you, I'll probably get you killed."

Kate stared, disbelieving, at her. "So your plan is to make me go _alone?_"

"They're after me, not you," Amy replied quietly, turning away. "I need to deal with the Windcatcher by myself. I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."

Kate wasn't about to leave it at that. She grabbed the Time Lady's shoulders and forcefully turned her around. Amy didn't fight, but she didn't look at her either.

"Amy. Look at me."

"Don't call me that," Amelia replied bitterly. Kate didn't relent.

"I'll call you what I want. _Look__ at __me._"

At last, Amy relented, mournfully meeting her friend's gaze. Katherine reached up, brushing away some of the hair that had fallen across her friend's cheek. It was just about the most tender thing she'd ever done.

"Don't do this, Amelia," she whispered, imploring. "Please."

"I'm not going to die. I just need to do this alone, that's all. I've got a plan, don't worry. You'll see me again soon." Amy smiled confidently as she spoke. It was quite something, really, just how at ease she was with... everything. At last, at long last, she was at peace with the world and with herself.

But Katherine wasn't convinced. "What if I don't? What if – what if you-"

"Then that's how it is," Amy cut her off firmly. Quietly, but firmly. "It's alright, Katherine. Don't worry about me if I don't make it. So long as you're safe, and the Doctor's safe... that's what matters. _You _taught me that."

"I didn't teach you _this,__" _Kate retorted. "Not to throw your life away on some stupid fucking game."

"I'm not. I'll make it. This'll work, I know it will," Amy repeated, utterly confident.

"But if it doesn't-"

"-then it doesn't matter. Whatever happens, they'll be distracted long enough for you to escape. Everything ends eventually, and I'd rather go out like this, fighting for the people I love. But that won't happen. I'm a survivor, Katherine. I'll survive."

"And _if_ you don't?" Kate repeated, her voice shaking. A single tear threatened to roll from her eyes, but she brushed it back. "Then what do I – what do I say? What do I tell the Doctor? What do I _say?_"

"You don't need to say anything," Amy replied gently, stepping forward so they were barely separated. "Just remind him how much I loved him, how much I will always love him. Just remind him that through my mad and my crazy, I was just a lonely little girl who got to see the stars. Isn't that enough?"

Even as the first tears began to roll down Katherine's face, Amy's expression didn't change one whit. Just that dignified tilt of her chin, that same crinkle in her eyes, the same damned sad, tender smile.

"_Damn you,_ Amelia. Why are you doing this?"

_**Because **__**I **__**have **__**to,**_ came the unspoken reply. _**Because **__**of **__**you, **__**because **__**of **__**Rory, **__**because **__**of **__**the **__**Doctor.**_

"Because you are all so, so precious to me, and I _can't_ lose any of you," Amy continued aloud. "I can't, OK? I love you all so, so much, and I'd sooner die than lose you. Here." She took Kate's free, trembling hand in her own, and placed her palm on top. Kate looked down as she removed it, revealing a tiny piece of obsidian-black metal.

"You know what this is," Amy said softly. "Everything I have is in here now. Show it to him. Show it to Rory. Keep it as something to remember me by if I don't make it, that mad Scottish girl who dreamed of a raggedy Doctor who could come and save her."

Kate could barely think. Could barely breathe. Could barely see through the tears. "Amelia..."

"Go, Katherine. The spaceport is less than a mile away. I'll meet you there in a few hours. Get there, and be safe." Without further ado, she grasped Kate's cheeks and pressed her lips to her friend's forehead.

"Thank you, Katherine Broad. Goodbye."

With that, she was gone, disappearing into the woodland with the merest flicker a breeze. Katherine turned around, crying desperately for her friend, but she had gone, vanishing as the dawn broke over her.

* * *

><p>He awoke with a gasp, completely disoriented. The space he'd found himself in was relatively dark, but he could feel thin rays of sunlight feeling their way through the windows.<p>

_Where the hell am I?_

As the world came into focus, he quickly worked out that he was in a small log cabin of some kind. Based on the sparse trees he could see through the single window, he guessed that he was still in the woodland somewhere. He tried to sit up – but stopped when he heard a soft, accented lilt behind him.

"Going somewhere, Alpha One?"

He turned around to see Amy Pond right behind him, leaning against the corner of the cabin. Her arms were folded across the chest, holding an easy, nonchalant pose.

"You didn't kill me," he vocalised in mild surprise.

"It's not my style." She pushed herself off the wall and, to his surprise, sat right next to him, as a friend would over lunch. He studied her closely. He was expecting a scarred, battle-hardened lady of war, and maybe she was, but she wore the face and demeanour of an attractive but otherwise average young lady, a sparse collection of freckles the only blemishes on her pale, round face. She smiled at him.

"Expecting someone else?"

"Someone older, yes," he admitted.

She laughed. "One thing I've learnt is that time doesn't tell you how old you are – on the inside, anyway. In another life I might have been waking up with a raging hangover from a party at this moment, but no."

He shifted slightly, but kept his eyes firmly locked onto hers. Young she may be, but she was clearly self-confident, and it wouldn't do to give an inch to her.

"What do you want from me?"

She laughed again. "Nothing. I've already taken what I need. Doesn't mean we can't sit and chat, though."

"Sit and-"

"I'm not in the business of making enemies, it's just not a good idea. The only real enemy I ever made is now my best friend. I don't have anything against you, or the Windcatcher, or anyone else."

"But you're taking me hostage," he pointed out.

"True."

"And you'll probably kill me and anyone else who tries to get in your way."

"Also true," she admitted. "Young doesn't mean nice."

He eyed her carefully. He didn't doubt that she was telling the truth, he could see that in her eyes. Cold. Hard. Lit by an unbreakable iron will. If he were to get out of this predicament alive, he would have to be careful. And he would have to know what cards he had to play.

"What do you want?" He asked. _Put __that __on __the __table._

"Same thing as you – I just want to go home. I just want my friends to be safe. I want to make sure no one gets hurt. And," she paused for a moment, letting the words hang in the air, "I think the Windcatcher wants the same thing."

He snorted. "Won't happen. His contract has changed to capture-or-kill, you know. And he _never_ fails to fulfill a contract."

To his surprise, she simply cocked her head and smiled at him. "Well... we both know that isn't _quite_ true, is it? Especially not where Time Lords are concerned."

He gasped silently, doing a quick double-take before regathering himself. "That was a long time ago."

"I wouldn't know. The Time War was before I came around."

His eyes widened to saucers, his face paling. That little tidbit was a bridge too far. How did she know _that?_ That was a piece of information the Windcatcher had been very, very careful not to let anyone but his most trusted associates know – and know a _target_ had found out?

_How?_

"Oh, don't act all surprised," she told him, still smiling, as if able to hear his thoughts. "After all, you were the one who told me – in a manner of speaking."

The penny dropped. When he next spoke, he did his best to keep his voice level, not betraying the nasty twist in his stomach or the dryness in his throat. "And what else have I 'told you'?"

"Only what I needed to know."

"Such as...?"

"Such as the fact that he fought alongside the Doctor, a long time ago."

He goggled at her. "That's it? You don't know who he is, or what he wants, or why he does what he does – but you're willing to believe that he'll let you go based on _that?_"

"I'll have to work at it," she admitted, "But it's good enough for me. If it's good enough for the Doctor, it's good enough for me."

He was about to reply, and challenge her cast-iron resolve, but was interrupted by the shrill beeping of an alarm.

"Ooh." Amy stood, checking her watch and smiling thinly. "Looks like it's time for me to make a phone call. Sorry, but I gotta dash." She picked up a long, curved sword she'd left on the floor and pulled out a small, pink mobile phone from her pocket before glancing back at him. "You don't even need me to tell you that trying to escape would be a really dumb idea, yeah?"

"I suspect that you'd be able to stop me either way," he admitted, though he was busy running through his options. None of them seemed particularly viable, however, when he knew that she was probably monitoring his thoughts.

"Good to see we're on the same page." She pushed the door open, but paused before she entered. "What's your name, by the way?"

He narrowed his eyes. "You already know it."

"Your _real_ name."

"Why do you care?"

"I need to remind myself that I'm dealing with actual people's lives here," she told him quietly. "What's your name?"

He swallowed, that little twist in his stomach knotting further, before answering. "Johansen."

She gazed at him, her eyes searching, studying, two drills piercing his defences, before nodding and turning away. The last time Johansen saw Amelia Pond, she was murmuring his name under her breath as she closed the door behind her.

* * *

><p>This was killing her. Kate was sure of it, both physically and emotionally.<p>

She'd barely been able to walk in a straight line since Amelia had taken her leave. One, because she was convinced – like, properly convinced – that she had just seen the Time Lady for the last time. Amy was going to her death, she was sure. Proud-backed and clear-eyed, but it was still _her __death._

_Damn __her._ Why was Amy doing this? She'd tried calling out in her mind, but Amy had put up some kind of barrier around her mind which was simply impenetrable. Trying to reach Amy that way would be like trying to climb Mt Everest with nothing more than her bare hands.

So yeah. That was tough. She could still see that sad, distant smile, fixed in her mind eye, she could still feel the goodbye kiss to her forehead, a lingering burning sensation that simply refused to be gone.

She hated this, saying goodbye. Hated it. She'd had to do this sort of thing before, and although there was at least some hope Amy would get through this, there were a few old demons she'd inadvertently triggered here. It was all the more painful because she knew she'd have to do this one more time, in a different and rather more personal way, and do it soon.

She leant against the wall of the spaceport entrance, closing her eyes and breathing heavily, trying to block out the hubbub of noise around her. The last week had taken its toll. Not just emotionally, but physically too, if this headache was anything to go by. The dull ache in the base of her neck had spread into a full-blown, fiery migraine.

"You okay, miss?"

She opened her eyes. The security guard had evidently noticed her slumped and panting against the wall, clutching at her hair in pain.

"Fine, thanks," she replied with a dazzling false smile. It disappeared once it left, though, as the pain took hold once more. She'd had to take one or two breaks on the way here, trying to ride out the debilitating flame-front of pain gripping her head. She'd even passed out once, simply collapsing in the street for a few seconds, as if her body had momentarily decided to take a break. If she could think straight, she would probably have to pin it on whatever Amy had done to her last evening.

Well, she was here now, and supposedly safe. And supposedly waiting for Amy. She looked around at the spaceport entrance hall surrounding her. It looked sort of like every other airport terminal she'd seen, frankly. Lots of people, lots of concrete, metal and glass. High, vaulting walls and clean, polished floors, with the morning light now streaming joyously through the broad windows.

Fortunately, the massing crowds seemed to take any notice of a lone blonde girl leaning against a wall. Given that she was in a completely alien world with no place to go, there wasn't much else for her to do. She slid to the floor, still rubbing her head furiously. She was about to contemplate a nap when a voice nearby pricked her attention.

"...I've been trying for the last hour, but I haven't been able to get through to the Windcatcher. God knows what's going through his mind..."

_Windcatcher._

She opened her eyes again and looked around. A tall, dark man, black-suited with glasses had just strode past, almost identical to the thug who put a gun to her head in the hospital. His finger was pressed to a communicator at his ear, and he was too deep in conversation to notice her on the floor. She got up at once, following after him and straining her ears to catch his words. Her hearing seemed a bit sharper than usual, which was handy as it meant she could make out what he was saying. And what she heard, she didn't like.

"Honestly, I don't understand why he just doesn't send us in and terminate her. It would be easier said than done, but it'd be a damn sight smarter then what he's trying now. He's getting cold feet, in my opinion. Seems to attached to these Time Lords to do his job."

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, pushing the headache out of her mind. The man seemed to be going into a storage room of some kind, presumably for some privacy. As surreptitiously as she could, she reached into the bag and retrieved Jack's blaster that she'd stolen, all those days ago, and followed him in. Fortunately, his back was turned to him as she entered.

"Those are the new orders? From his employer? Excellent. Then move in and take her out, I'll be-"

"Hold it there, sport." He froze instantly at her voice, clearly aware that there was a gun pressed to the back of his head. "Don't make a sound, put your hands up, and turn around. _Slowly._"

He did so, exactly as instructed. His eyes were wide behind his glasses, which told Kate all she needed to know. She allowed herself a little smile at the knowledge that she'd taken him so utterly off-guard.

"You and your friends are going to kill her, aren't you? _Uh-uh-uh,__"_ she changed tack suddenly, seeing him open his mouth. A jab of her gun towards him pre-empted any words from him. "No speaking. Just nod for yes."

He nodded. Her hand trembled, a surge of white-hot rage rising within her, but she managed to keep her cool. She looked him up and down, and made her decision.

"Take out your gun and put it on the floor. Slowly. No sudden moves."

He did so. A scoped rifle with a retractable barrel. Just compact enough to fit in her bag, she was thankful to see.

"Your other gun." He had to have another one, she reasoned, and she was right. It followed from under his suit, a small blaster not unlike the one aimed at his face. _Amy __can __have __that __one._

"Your ammo. Your communicator, too... good. Lastly, your glasses." She could see little images being projected across them, and she guessed they were more for fancy information-giving purposes rather than eyesight correction. They joined the rest of the man's equipment on the floor.

Satisfied that he was both unarmed and free of any other useful equipment, she smiled broadly and nodded to him. "Good. Now get the hell out of here, and don't even think about going near me or Amy. I'm a damn good shot."

He didn't need asking twice. The door slammed shut behind him as he fled, leaving her alone with his bequeathed equipment. Quick as a flash, she crammed the guns and ammunition into her bag, placed the communicator in her ear and the glasses on her nose. The display on the glasses was illegible to her, an array of alien symbols that drew a frown from her. She tapped the frame experimentally – and in an instant, the display changed to what was unmistakeably a map. A map of a woodland.

With thirty tiny red dots on it... and they seemed to be converging.

It hit her at once. _They're __going __for __her._

She burst through the doors back into the hall, racing through the soaring, glass-enclosed entrance hall of the spaceport, driven by a single purpose.

If they wanted Amy, they'd have to get through her first.

* * *

><p>For one of the first times in his long career, the Windcatcher was nervous.<p>

With reason, of course. He was perfectly aware of what Time Lords were capable of, having fought with and against many in a long-lost, distant past. His only failure, to date, had been an assignment where he had attempted to eliminate a Time Lord which had threatened Valaren after it had withdrawn from the alliance with Gallifrey. Fortunately, a certain man by the name of the Doctor had made a rather dramatic intervention, meaning that the inevitable retribution in the form of total annihilation, well, never came.

They could be a nasty bunch, Time Lords. Oh, sure, there were nice ones. The Doctor for one, obviously. He'd never met the Corsair before he'd disappeared, but he'd heard good things. There were other good ones, but most of them had thrown themselves fearlessly into the front line and had been ruthlessly wiped out as a result. What remained, as a general rule, were nastier, more duplicitous and well... bad. Far from being the upstanding, pious arbiters of universal peace he had once thought them, they were really not much better than anyone else, if at all. Those days had taught him a lot about the universe.

It was that deeply ingrained cynicism that had led him here. Hunting for one of the last living Time Lords. He wondered briefly what end of the spectrum Amy Pond fell onto.

Well, alright, that was hardly fair. She wasn't really a normal Time Lord. Not just in terms of her abilities, which were certainly unusual, but her upbringing. The research he'd done over the past few days had been both illuminating and confusing. Really, the more he thought about it, the less it made sense.

She'd grown up on Earth. Not Gallifrey.

She'd been _human_ once. Not Time Lord.

She was twenty two. _Twenty __two!_ He shook his head at the thought. He wasn't hunting a ruthless, war-hardened psychopath, as he had in the last days of the Time War. He was hunting a _girl!_ A girl who had done, as far as he could tell, absolutely no wrong in her life, and who despite her cockiness must surely have known how out of her depth she was.

And how exactly had they ended up here in the first place? The universe was far too vast a place for him to believe that her arrival here, less than two years after he'd been told to be on the lookout for her, was coincidental. Nor, surely, were the arcane workings of the equaliser field that just happened to provide a ready-made trap for her when she did show up.

No, the more he thought about this, the more it seemed... off. Yes, he was on a contract. Yes, he _needed_ to succeed, or the consequences for him would be unpleasant. But he still had some vestige of a moral compass left, and, well... didn't it just all _feel_ so, so wrong?

When he'd sent his 'showtime' message to mobilise his men for the final push, he'd expected to feel nothing but the satisfaction of a job well done and the security of knowing that he'd have the funds to fulfil his true mission, back on Valaren. That world that didn't exist... that world that only he could protect.

What he hadn't expected was this deep, nauseating feeling, deep inside him, that he was making a terrible mistake. Yet that was what he had now.

He shook his head again, clearing his mind. Young she may be, but she was still exceptionally dangerous, and a false move born of distraction would likely be fatal to his chances of success.

He glided silently through the clearings, his eyes searching hawk-like for any disturbance, any sign of movement. Alpha One's tracking beacon had gone offline some time before, meaning he had very little idea where she was. The morning light made it easier, of course, but where did he start? What was he looking for? He'd been here for some time already and seen nothing.

He was beginning to feel the first onset of frustration when the communicator hardwired into his glasses crackled into life. He frowned.

_Odd._ His men were trained not to break silence, and not to use an open channel like this. Nevertheless, he adjusted his glasses to boost the signal.

"Alright," he murmured. "You have my attention."

"Hello," came the instant reply through his communicator, smooth, lyrical and utterly assured. "Nice morning, isn't it?"

"Miss Pond," he murmured, searching left and right for any sign of the Time Lady. He didn't see anything, and immediately admonished himself for being so silly. "I'm impressed you managed to find this channel."

"Wasn't hard. Don't try to back-trace the signal, by the way. It's scrambled."

He smiled wryly to himself. "Clever girl, aren't you? Are you always this friendly with your enemies?" He was humouring her, but there was genuine curiosity behind it. Who _was_ this girl, really?

"Enemy? Since when were we enemies? I don't want to fight you. I don't want to hurt you."

He stopped dead in his tracks, taken aback by the revelation. "Hurt me...?"

"I don't know what it is you've got against me, but too many people have gotten hurt already. My friends. Your friends. It's time this stopped."

"My contract doesn't work like that, as I'm sure your aware," he replied quietly, though with less ease than normal. "It's you or nothing."

"I'm not dealing with your _employers,__" _Amy told him, emphasising the last word with naked contempt, "I'm dealing with you. I've learnt a lot about you, you know. About where you're from, what you did and what you do. And I know you're better than this."

"And are you?"

"No," came the instant, easy reply. "But the people _I __love_ are in between the two of us, and I will burn anyone who hurts them. I don't want to have to do that, but I will if I need to," Amy told him, her smooth, sweet voice laced with new venom. "You don't want to see that. I _know_ you don't. Alpha One told me you don't... well, I say told. More I took it from him."

His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides. Again, another reminder that for all her naivete and wide-eyed idealism, this was a thoroughly dangerous individual. "Answer me truthfully, please. What have you done to him?"

"I told you," she replied. "Enough people have gotten hurt."

He frowned. "What do you – _ah_."

"Now it clicks," she said dryly, as the penny dropped at last.

"So you're proposing a-"

"-straight swap. I give you your friend, safe and well, you disable whatever the hell it is you've done to the TARDIS. That's the offer."

"You're placing a lot of faith in someone who might well kill you."

"You fought alongside the Doctor," she replied quickly and easily. "You must have _some_ honour."

"And how do I know that you won't just fly away in your time machine?"

"And how do I know you won't get the thirty blokes you have watching this place to shoot me on sight – or shoot Katherine?"

"You're the one who put her in this situation," he replied quietly. The calmness of his voice, however, hid the intricate calculations going on inside, the questions he was working over as he scanned his surroundings.

_What's she doing? Why is she wasting her time like so?_

It made little sense. If the offer was as simple as a hostage swap, then why did he need to drag him to the middle of the woodland, miles away? Why be so specific about the place where he was supposed to be? And why did he need to be alone? And why, _why_ was she bothering to talk to him, distract him like this?

_There has to be something more to this._

The Time Lady, however, was completely unaware of the internal machinations going on in the Windcatcher's mind. Based on the tone of her voice, he'd struck a nerve with his last point.

"If your men have touched her..." She hissed, her voice suddenly as cold as ice. "I swear, you'll be in even more trouble than you are now."

He barked out a short, dismissive laugh. "Right now? You speak as if you're... you're..."

He trailed off, something occurring to him. _More __trouble __than __you __are __now._He repeated the words in his mind, joining the dots. She would only say that if she felt she had some direct hold over him. As if she were actually...

"...watching me."

He smiled as the light dawned on him. _Oh, __you __clever __girl... __but __not __clever __enough_.

As surreptitiously as he could, he pressed a finger to his wrist, activating a hidden gun buried there. Meanwhile, the line remained silent – Amy wasn't answering him, and he now knew why.

"You know," he said, in a loud, clear voice, one that carried clearly around him. "I quite admire and respect you. You're clearly a strong-willed, clever and skilled individual, quite worthy of carrying the mantle of Time Lady."

He took out a cartridge of ammunition and loaded it into his wrist gun as he spoke, cocking it so it was ready to fire.

"But the problem is, you're just too _young_ to be doing this. Too young to understand how this all works, and what this all means. Sure, you're clever – but really, you're just a girl. Now you've lost your nerve, you've panicked. And that just makes you..."

In a single fluid motion, he raised his arm and spun around, dropping his knees to firing position as he took aim.

"..._predictable._"

There, in front of him, was the Time Lady herself. Her long, flowing red hair cascaded across her shoulders, the shining silver sword in her hands was raised in preparation for a strike, and her fierce, blazing eyes were wide with surprise, fixed on the gun pointing directly at her forehead.

"Hello, Amelia Pond," he murmured. "I'm the Windcatcher."

* * *

><p><strong>Whew. That was surprisingly tough to write. It hit me as I was doing that first woodland section just how brutally I've exposed Amy to the elements, as it were... poor girl.<strong>

**Please review, it really, really helps and it doesn't take that long. **


	42. The Flight of Katherine Broad

**Sorry for the wait. Now working on two major stories at once; it's time consuming. And I actually fully intend to follow through on _In Quiet Desperation_, which I'll concede is rare for me. More seriously, though, I am well aware of how slowly this story has progressed for the past, *ahem*, year, and I apologise profusely. I suspect my tardiness has pissed off a good deal of my readers – but what can you do?**

**In fact, how many of you who started reading this some time in 2011 _are_ still reading this? Give us a shout by the usual method so I can thank you personally, but even if you don't, thanks for putting up with me.**

**Let's carry on. I use a rather famous John Maynard Keynes line in this, see if you can spot it.**

* * *

><p><strong>CHAPTER 42. The Flight of Katherine Broad: 2 April 2011<strong>

She'd panicked.

It was as simple as that. Amy had been following the Windcatcher for well over an hour, shadowing his every move, scanning her surroundings for followers and darting between trees to keep hidden. Once she'd convinced herself that everything was in place, she'd made her move.

But she'd been too obvious. Too direct. He'd seen straight through her plan, and when the truth dawned on him that he was indeed being shadowed by the Time Lady, she'd panicked. And ended up here, with a gun pointed at her head.

"The sword, if you please." The Windcatcher's voice was light, polite, yet laced with the calm satisfaction of victory.

He was tall, about the same height as she was, his silver-white hair streaked backwards and his gold-framed spectacles glimmering in the sunlight. He looked about fifty in human terms, with a high-set chin, fair complexion and a proud demeanour, but Amy was under no illusions about his nature, because there was no way someone with those eyes could be human. They were gunmetal-grey, perfectly circular and glowed from within, lit by tiny rivulets of electrical activity dancing through the irises.

He held out his free hand, repeating the order to hand over the weapon. With a gun aimed squarely between her eyes, Amy had little choice but to flip the sword over in her hand, offering him the handle. His smile broadened as he took it, his eyes running up and down the shining silver blade.

"It's beautiful, I'll give you that. I haven't seen Gallifreyean engravings in a long, long time," he murmured.

Despite her situation, and the fact that she was constantly on the lookout for an escape, she couldn't help but be a little startled out of her defensive mode by that. "You can read it?"

"The gene was spliced into me," he replied, still with that same wry smile. "But you already knew that, didn't you? You know all about me."

Amy shook her head quickly. "No – no, just what Johansen told me."

"Which is more than enough. Knowledge is power, Miss Pond." He placed a hand to his glasses, evidently activating a communicator of some kind. "Base, this is the Windcatcher. I have the mark, require collection."

"Are you going to kill me now?"

"Would you like me to?"

Somewhere deep inside her, a dark whisper urged her to reply in the affirmative, to just nod her head and let him end it – but she dismissed it instantly.

"I'd like an answer, Miss Pond," he repeated.

"Alright," she replied, that old cocky smile on her face once again, and made her move.

The Windcatcher was rapid, his reactions enhanced by technology and genetics, but even he couldn't possibly keep up with Amy as she dove to the ground, the bullet whipping through her hair as it fanned out behind her. She balanced herself, her centre of gravity hovering just above the ground, before springing, cat-like, at him.

Her idea was simple: get back the sword. Her leap had propelled her straight at him, so his gun hand was knocked away, the second bullet sailing harmlessly into the air. For a brief moment, it looked as if she had the upper hand – but she hadn't counted on his experience.

Whilst she'd jumped, he'd taken the slightest step to the side, so her leap took her ever so slightly off-centre. When she collided into him, the momentum spun him around... perfect for the sword in his other hand.

Amy never saw it. The first she knew of it was an explosive pain right across her side as the flat of the sword slammed into her. It all happened far too quickly for her to react and before she knew it she was on her back, clutching at her side, a groaning mess on the floor.

He stood over her, smiling in much the same way she had been, pressing the sword underneath her chin. She gasped as she felt the cold bite of the metal in her neck, gazing up at him with wide, fearful eyes.

"I admire your fight," he told her, "but that was stupid. What made you think that was a good idea?"

She glared at him, spitting out a globule of thickened blood in his direction. She wasn't about to play his game.

"What the hell do you want with me?"

"Me? I'm on a contract. You'll have to ask my employers when you get the chance."

"And they are...?"

She was really letting sheer defiance drive her words now, trying in vain to try and shift the balance of power just a little way back towards her, so the last thing she expected was for his smile to broaden, his gunmetal-grey eyes twinkling.

"Well, I'm guessing you've already heard them. After all, you and the Precept have past history, don't you?"

Her breath hitched in her throat, her face paling to a pearly bone-white as her mind raced back to a chilly, wind-swept London morning, months ago now, and a rescue of a certain blone-haired girl...

"You brought her into this, Amelia Pond," the Windcatcher continued, his voice quiet and tinged with a distant, wavering note that sounded almost like... almost like...

_Like regret._

She glared at him, channelling her fear into defiance, her doubt into rage. "You can't have her. She's gone."

"Who says I want her?"

"Don't get all moral-high-ground to me," Amy spat. "You lot were chasing after her. You tried to _shoot_ her. Now she's gone, out of your reach," she snarled at him, a twisted analogue of triumph flashing across her pale features.

The Windcatcher gazed at her for a moment, the smile fading as if forgotten in his stream of thought, washing away into pensiveness.

"You saved her."

"Yes."

"You know she could have helped you, you know that alone you'd be much less capable of making it out alive, let alone escaping, but you still sent her away." It wasn't a question.

She didn't care. "_Yes._"

"All your ability, your power, your immortality – but you still think like a young girl from that lonely blue planet," he murmured, his head tilted in curiosity as if she were an enigma to be unlocked, not a mark to be captured. "You really are so... _human_, aren't you?"

"I..." Amy spat out, her unsteady breathing driving the point of her own sword deeper and deeper into her skin, the point on the verge of penetration, "am_ not human._"

"Clearly not, or we wouldn't be standing here." Evidently bored of the conversation, the Windcatcher placed a finger to his glasses and reactivated the communicator. "Windcatcher to Base, I'm waiting for pickup." No response. "Windcatcher to Base, can you hear me? For the sake of – it's _me!_"

Plainly, no one was responding. He shook his head, disregarding the communicator and gripping the sword with both hands. The sword moved lower, shifting from its resting point underneath her chin to settle right in the hollow of her throat. One little push, she knew, and...

"You're going to kill me now, aren't you?" It was odd, really. She didn't think she'd be so calm.

"I don't have to. I could take you into custody, wait until my men arrive," he answered, though for the first time, his unflappably cool demeanour had cracked slightly.

"Then why haven't they?"

"I..." He hesitated, catching himself, a rare sign of doubt. "It doesn't matter. I still have you. You're _mine._"

"You – you could take me alive," she answered quickly, breathlessly. "Take your chances."

"But you wouldn't go quietly, would you? You'd fight, defiant until the end."

She shook her head. He kept talking.

"You're right, after all. You aren't human... you're a Time Lady. And Time Ladies don't die easily. If I tried to take you alive, you would stop at nothing to escape. You wouldn't care how many people you trampled under your foot to be free," he spoke quietly, slowly, as if truly seeing her for the first time.

Amy didn't answer, her eyes averted, clouded and empty. He'd tapped right into her deepest, darkest fear, exposing the problem that she knew had only one true solution.

"So, Amelia Pond," He tightened his grip, the sword pressing so hard into her neck that Amy could feel her skin piercing. "Would you like me to kill you?"

_Say yes._

She clamped the voice down as best she could, but she couldn't exactly escape the situation. She swallowed nervously, a coiling sensation deep inside her. "You're going to anyway, aren't you?"

"Not if you don't want me to."

_You do._ She screwed up her eyes, once again forcing the whispers away.

"I don't have to tell you."

"I don't have to kill you."

"You don't want to?"

He narrowed his eyes, studying her.

"Do you?"

_Yes._

She opened her mouth, seeking an answer, trying to form a response that simply couldn't be put into words. All that was left was the end, the final, quiet realisation that this was it, alone, far from help, far from _him_, where no one could hear her, no one could be _hurt _by her.

He raised the sword, the metal glittering in the silent, preparing the final blow – and she flinched. She _flinched_. At the last moment, she betrayed herself, closing her eyes, not wanting to _watch_, to see her own end. She just wished he would do it _quickly_, before she lost her nerve – what was taking him so long?

Though, it did give her once last chance to see him again, feel the brush of his lips against her forehead, the fabric of his bow-tie under her fingers. Even now, she could hear him, she could _feel_ him, distant yet never gone, never leaving her. Maybe, just maybe, she'd see him from the other side, she'd see all of them – Katherine, Rory, her _parents-_

_CRACK!_

She opened her eyes, expecting to see her doom – but she didn't. Instead, she saw the sword falling from his limp hands, the glow vanishing from his eyes, sparks falling like rain from a gaping hole in his head.

She scrambled onto all fours away from him, reclaiming her falling weapon and fleeing for impossible, miraculous safety – only to run straight into someone else.

The girl's fair skin and golden-blonde hair seemed to glow in the morning sun, a trick of the light perhaps – or, more likely, a by-product of the fact that Amy had never been so pleased to see Katherine Broad in her life.

Kate lowered her long, scoped rifle, a wry, triumphant smile on her face.

"Miss me?"

* * *

><p>Nothing got up the Doctor's nerves quite like being powerless.<p>

From a cold, objective point of view, he really should have been more relaxed than he was now. All the pieces were in place; all his plans were in motion; everything was coming together. The equaliser field was primed, fuelled by the hopes and dreams of the Earthsphere billions which. Like an avalanche, the outpouring of energy would be impossible to hold back once the first little push was given. Jack, and Michael following afterwards, were far beneath trying to harness that energy, channel that unstoppable force into his TARDIS. And Amy, wonderful and clever girl that she was, had managed to find the quantum link that Stanley had mentioned yesterday, so with a little hope, and a lot of luck, he'd land right on top of her.

All the pieces were in place. Now came the waiting... but he'd never been good at that. Not like she was.

Then again, there were so many things that she was good at – no, that she was _amazing_ at – that he wasn't. He remembered what he was doing when he was twenty-two... running around the fields of blood-red Gallifreyean grass, which even now were like countless shards of twinkling glass in his mind's eye.

Really, at this age a Time Lord was still a child, yet there she was – so quick, so sharp, so strong. Even from far away, he could still feel her fighting with every bone an cell in her body.

Fighting the past that _he_ had bequeathed her.

To be fair, much of the diary had nothing to do with him. Rather, he wasn't mentioned for much of it. Instead, it was mostly the musings, worries and unspoken wishes of a lonely young girl growing up in a village where she didn't quite fit.

Even so, he could see himself woven throughout, even if he wasn't mentioned by name. His fingerprints were on every page, his presence – or, rather, his absence – hidden in the curve of every letter, buried beneath every word.

And then, just occasionally, he'd come across a place where little Amelia's shell had cracked.

_June 15, 1999,_ the diary read. _He hasn't come back yet. _

_October 21, 2001. Still hasn't come back. But he will. He will. _

_January 3, 2003. I wonder if he'll ever come back for me... he has to. What would I be if he didn't?_

"Doctor."

He jumped up, startled out of his reverie by the low, rattling growl of the giant repticore. The sun was just beginning to rise on Earthsphere, the light glimmering off Machariam's golden scales. It was a majestic sight, the proud arch of his back, the bright glimmer of his sky-blue eyes, but it also made him look old. Very, very old.

"Right – drifted off, sorry." The Doctor snapped the diary shut and stuffed it into his pocket, putting it out of his mind. "So we're done? We're good?"

"It is ready," Machariam replied. Behind the repticore, the to and fro of the repticore colony hadn't stopped, but there was still a more relaxed vibe to it, the thrum of activity beginning to wind down.

"And the link...?"

"Is finished. Your TARDIS is now coupled with ours. With luck, that will mean that when your machine goes active, so will ours."

The Doctor brushed past the repticore, inspecting the device in the forest clearing. Much of the foliage around the clearing had been cleaned out by the workers, leaving a circular, ornate floor of twisted, blood-red hardwood. Attached to them were the columns he'd seen before, twisting up into the sky, and in the centre was the console, a dark, ochre-brown mass of hardwood and switches. Despite the structure's organic appearance and intricate design, the glow emanating from below hinted at its true nature – this was no showpiece.

The Doctor strode around the central console, inspecting it with his sonic. It hummed merrily in response.

"Brilliant." He pocketed the sonic with a rather satisfied air. "So. When Michael and Jack get back with some juice, I send Amy's location to your TARDIS, and we-"

"No."

He stopped dead in his tracks, turning slowly to face the giant repticore. "What do you mean, _no_?" His voice was light, yet just uneven enough to put anyone listening on edge. But Machariam was not so easily fazed.

"You. Not we."

The Doctor took a single, weighted step towards the repticore. "_We?_"

"You will have to do what you need to do alone. We cannot assist."

"Why not?"

"My primary concern is my people, Doctor. Save your friend – but do not count on our help. I have a species to save."

Something hot, dark and formless was manifesting itself inside the Doctor, and his voice was just gaining the slightest roughness around the edges when he next spoke. "Your TARDIS is linked to mine, you know. I could control the power and the navigation myself."

There was a thin, rattling noise, a sharp intake of breath over Machariam's scales as they tensed inwards. "Would you really do that, Doctor?" the repticore asked quietly. "Would you really?"

The Doctor turned away, leaning heavily on the central column. He ran his hand over the bark-like material on the outside, feeling its rough, organic texture, the warmth emanating from beneath seeping upwards into his fingers. It was so utterly unlike what he was used to when it came to time machines – a marvel of the skill of countless generations of repticore, a monument to the blood and toil of untold thousands, so unlike... yet so like his own, in that it was the last relic of a race on the precipice, hanging desperately onto its existence.

"No," he finally answered. He turned around to face the aged repticore elder once more, his face impassive. "But I wonder if you've ever asked yourself the same question."

With that, he left, leaving the repticore colony without taking a moment to stop and look back. Machariam, however, did, his sky-blue eyes gazing after the youthful, ancient alien long after he had vanished beneath the undergrowth.

* * *

><p>In all the years Kate had known Amy, first as a complete oddball, then as an unwanted enemy and finally as close a friend, she'd never known the Scot to be short of a word or two. Sure, Amy might have been a little speechless, even a little stunned on occasion (especially recently) but she'd always had something up her sleeve: a sharp retort or some other bone-dry remark to leave on the table.<p>

Not this time, however.

This time Amy just stared, mouth agape, her eyes shining with disbelief. The Time Lady closed and opened her mouth once, twice, clearly trying to find a way to push through her astonishment and reassert herself.

"You came back," she eventually managed, completely at a loss to say anything else.

"I did," Kate said.

"You saved me."

"You're my friend. Of course I did."

Just like that Amy was around her, embracing her like she was the Time Lady's life-raft amidst the raging torrents. Kate felt Amy whispering trembling thank-yous into her shoulder, the ginger digging fingernails into her back. She reciprocated, tightening her own embrace – which drew an immediate gasp.

She broke off, catching the briefest flash of Amy's pained grimace before the Time Lady collected herself, smiling gratefully back at her. Kate, however, had other concerns, and wasn't about to be distracted.

"Ames, what's wrong?" For the first time, Kate looked at Amy more closely, noticing speckles of blood on Amy's chin and a thin cut to her neck.

"Nothing," Amy replied, but her self-conscious wiping away of the blood told a different story, as did the way her hand kept involuntarily reaching for her side.

"Amy-"

"-I'm telling you, it's nothing-"

"I have to see," Kate cut her off firmly. She remembered back to that insane episode the Time Lady had put them through a few days before, where Amy had refused to self-heal her horrendous-though-fake injuries. It was the most drastic sign Kate had received that something very, very dangerous had clicked deep within Amy, and that the Time Lady was far more reliant on her friends than she was willing to admit.

This time, the injuries were nowhere near as bad but they still made Amy flinch when Kate touched them with trembling fingers. Much of her right side around the lowermost-rib upwards was covered in an ugly, purple-brown bruise, with the top of the bruise delineated by a long and rather deep cut.

"It's not that bad," Amy told her, though the way she forced the words through gritted teeth said otherwise.

"I'm guessing you can heal it in a hurry?" Kate asked, trying to keep the situation as light as she possibly could – things were tense enough without either of them showing it.

"Sort of. Should take care of itself in time."

Nevertheless, Amy let her tend to the wound, using some of the dressings they'd taken from the villa as a bandage. It clearly hurt like hell, as Amy's knuckles were bone-white as she held up her clothing for Kate to do her work. Between that and the dull, irritating pain in her head, it was slow work, but she got it done. She'd never let a mild headache stop her doing anything before, she wasn't about to-

"Katherine?" Amy looked down at Kate, concern on her brow as the blonde rubbed her temple, wincing. "You alright?"

"Hm? Oh yeah, fine. Just a headache," Kate replied off-hand, ignoring the sudden bolt of sharp, red-hot pain that had shot across her skull. That hadn't been so mild. "Don't worry about me; you're the one with the bruises here."

"You worry about me way too much," Amy whined.

"Oh, shut up and let me put this bandage on."

She did so, though it was tough work as Amy kept flinching and gasping every time she touched the bruises or applied any pressure. Kate suspected that there were a few cracked ribs under there, but Amy wasn't about to elaborate on it.

"Where exactly _did _you learn all this?" Amy asked after a few minutes, trying to keep the thickness from her voice.

"The internship, mostly," Kate replied as she fixed the last portion of the bandage.

"That was years ago. You can't have remembered _that_ much from it."

"Well..." Kate hesitated, trying not to bring up awkward topics, but she knew that Amy would spot such an obvious lie from a hundred miles off. "Rory has been teaching me a bit while I've been staying with him."

"You're dating him?"

Kate had to stop tending to Amy at that, instead staring at her in total disbelief. "You've barely escaped being captured and killed, you're injured, we're being hunted in the middle of an artificial paradise planet, I've got a goddamn headache and you're asking me _that?_"

Amy pouted, some of the old petulance resurfacing again. "What? I have a right to know, don't I?"

Kate took a deep breath before starting. "Amy-"

"Look, I'm not going to kill you or hate you or do anything terrible if you are," Amy said right over the top of her. "I'd just like to know-"

"_Amy,_" Katherine repeated, but to no avail.

"-because I do still sort of care about him and I want to make sure he ends up with the right-"

"_Amelia!" _Kate yelled, at last shutting up her friend. "I am _not_ dating him," she said firmly. "Not like that, anyway."

"Meaning?" Amy asked, an eyebrow raised.

"It means that we're not a _thing_. We're not dating or an item or a couple or whatever you want to call it. We are _just friends_," Kate told her, forcefully emphasising the last two words to try and get it through the Time Lady's occasionally thick skull – emotions and relationships were not exactly Amy's strong point, and she had a knack for missing the blatantly obvious.

This time, however, was different. "But you like him," Amy pointed out, her eyes narrowing slightly.

"I do," Kate admitted with a slight hesitation, knowing that lying would be a bad move at this point but looking for an escape nonetheless.

"And he likes you."

That was an even more unnervingly direct statement of fact – but fact it was. "He – he does."

"So what's the bloody problem? Sort it out, you useless git-"

Kate snorted. "So says you, who broke up him just before the two of you were about to get married and probably spent ages moping after him when he was gone."

"You know why I did that," Amy snapped, her eyes flashing. "You know why it couldn't have worked out. But last I checked you were living with him in Leadworth."

"Temporarily," Kate pointed out. "I'll go back to London once it's safe and finish my doctorate."

"Oh, right, that doctorate you won't even talk about," Amy said in a slightly mocking, sing-song tone. "Don't bullshit me, Katherine. And don't you dare lead Rory on."

"I'm not!" Kate's voice had risen to a frustrated half-shout, fuelled by the throbbing in her skull. "Look, Amy, we're all friends and I like you a lot now, but don't assume you know everything about me, because you _don't, _not by half-"

"You're _human!"_ Amy shouted right over the top of her. "You're _mortal! _And without _my_ mindlink, you'd have a completely normal mind! Look – I'm _giving_ him to you, _take him!_ Stop giving me all these bloody excuses, because it'll just hurt you and _him_, and besides you don't have any excuses compared to mine-"

"Wrong."

Kate's voice had dropped completely, soft, barely above a whisper, but even so it sliced straight through Amy's frustrated rant. Amy did a double-take, thrown off-balance by the complete shift in Kate's mood – from fiery, energetic and defiant to soft eyes, sad smiles and comforting squeezes of her hand.

The same way _she_ talked to people when she knew that they didn't understand.

"You are _so _wrong," Kate repeated, but her voice was still so soft, so gentle. "I do like him. I _do_. And I wish – I wish so many things were different, but everything happens for a reason, Amelia. You know that even better than I do. There's a reason Rory and I aren't together. There's a reason I decided to come aboard the TARDIS a second time. And there's a reason I'm here, helping you."

"But I sent you away for a reason as well. You were free. You were safe." Amy's temper had been quelled, but the frustrations still lingered.

"And when have I ever asked for that?" Kate asked. "I don't run to safety. I run _from_ it. You should know that by now."

"Even though you might not make it out?"

Kate chuckled gently. "Amy, In the long run-"

"-we're all dead," Amy completed, her voice tinged with bitter acknowledgement. "I know. But not today. I swear to you, _not today._"

Kate smiled, giving her hand another gentle squeeze. "You sound just like the Doctor," she joked. "And thanks, I don't plan on dying today – what the _hell _is that?"

They'd both covered their ears at the noise, their faces screwed up in sudden agony. The sound had come from nowhere as Kate had been speaking, and the first thing either of them could compare it to was a rather sharp rake being scraped with cruel precision over a chalkboard. The double-whammy of the noise and her headache doubled Kate over instantly, the girl crying out in pain.

It was clear where the sound was coming from because at the same moment the Windcatcher's fallen body had been engulfed in a thin, blue-grey cloud, concentrated especially around the still-sparking hole in his head.

Using her shoulder to shield her uncovered ear as best she could, Amy retrieved her sonic from her skirt pocket and scanned the body from afar. The results weren't the easiest to read through the squint induced by the hellish din, but they were clear enough.

"Nano-bot cloud!" she yelled upon reading the scan.

"What?!" Between the screeching racket and the hands over her ears, Kate didn't have the slightest hope of hearing her.

Even in this situation Amy still managed to roll her eyes. It took some effort, but she ripped one of the Kate's hands away and screamed into her ear.

"It's a nano-bot cloud! He's self-repairing!"

This time Kate got it. Even if she hadn't yelled it straight into her ear, though, she would have quickly worked it out because the body had begun to jerk into life, the arms and legs gyrating wildly in their sockets like something out of an old horror flick. As it did so, the sound died away, replaced only by a thin, mechanical hissing.

"Okay. I did _not_ need that," Kate declared as she straightened herself, rubbing her tortured ears. "Now what?"

"He'll be awake soon," Amy told her quickly, already beginning to step backwards from the rapidly reanimating body. "I can't stop the repair."

"What, is he some sort of robot?"

"Sort of, yeah. But he's older and smarter than any robot you've ever dreamed of," Amy told her.

"And so..."

"So it's time to go," Amy replied, grabbing her hand. "_Run!_"

Kate didn't need a second invitation. They sprinted from the scene as one, dashing between the trees beneath the flawless morning sky.

* * *

><p><strong>Not long to go now. Most of the pieces are in place, you should be starting to form an idea of how this ends (on top of the fact that I've already rather told you, to an extent).<strong>


End file.
